Latex Movie Review: Mr. and Mrs. Smith

He was happily married to America's favorite sitcom actress. She had a questionable relationship with her brother. When they both met on a movie set it was love at first sight. At first they denied their blossoming romance, but eventually there was the scandalous divorce for Pitiston and the beginning of the corny marriage of Joliepitt. This was not the plot for Mr. and Mrs Smith, it was the far more interesting back story. Viewing the actual movie one thing came to mind, I felt like I was watching a television pilot, the only difference being the expensive budget and body count. I was half expecting to see scenes from next weeks episode before the ending credits. That is not to say that the movie is not entertaining. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are John and Jane Smith, a couple who's marriage is on the rocks. But what neither realizes is that each is a spy working for competing intelligence agencies. When both agencies put out a hit on the same man John and Jane are both independently assigned and nearly take each other out. Their respective agencies order each to eliminate their spouse, something each are willing to do. This leads to the inevitable gunfight between the couple and their predictable reconciliation. When they fail to kill each other their respective agencies put a hit out on both of them.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith was meant to have been a comedy, and it is there that it fails. Simon Kinberg's script relies too much on old tiered gags that have been used before in many other movies and television shows. But to be fair, now knowing that Pitt and Jolie were falling in love on the set it is hard to buy their characters having a bad marriage. One gag does become ironic. At a house warming party Jane is seated in a room with other housewives who have brought their children along. One of them insists that Jane hold her infant. Jane is reluctant and when the baby is stuck into her hands anyway she holds it as if she was handed a bag of crap. In the years to follow Angelina would become so fond of children that she and Brad would adopt several of them. The idea that her character finds children repulsive was a bit of unintentional humor, and one of the few gags that actually make you smirk. While the movie tanks on the comedy front, it excels as an action film, this thanks to director Doug Liman who a year earlier had directed The Bourne Identity. This is especially true with the shootouts which are as inventive and compelling as those shot by the best Hong Kong directors. The movie does suffer from some lapses in logic, such as how non government secret agencies can go around assassinating criminals withing this countries borders and even launch armed raids against their rouge agents without the proper authorities noticing. Or where they get the finances for the millions of dollars worth of weapons, equipment, manpower and secret bases. But this is the same poor logic found in most spy dramas.

THE SCENE:
While Angelina wears plenty of tight outfits that show off her body, and after a session of sex with Brad is wearing nothing but a white dress shirt, all worth looking at, she only wears one outfit in this movie that qualifies as kinky. During one of her missions she goes undercover as a high class call girl in order to get into a guarded hotel room with the arms dealer she has been assigned to assassinate. She shows up wearing a black trench coat, and at 22 minutes removes it to reveal a fantastic latex outfit beneath. From the ground up it is thigh high black vinyl boots over black fish net stockings and garters, a short black latex skirt, black latex corset top and black arm warmers. She is seen in the outfit again at 24 minutes, this time with the addition of a riding crop as a prop. After she snaps her target's neck she puts the trench coat back on, but while making her escape by dropping over the balcony while holding on to a line the trench coat blows upwards so that the latex skirt is visible. There is a nice prelude and coda to this scene. At 20 minutes Angelina first arrives at the hotel, and as she gets out of the cab we see a nice shot of her boot and part of her stocking. Once her mission is over she goes back undercover as Mrs Smith, showing up at a neighbors house warming party wearing a normal sweater dress, but has for some reason forgotten to remove her stockings and boots, and while sitting down and crossing her leg one of the boots and the fishnet stocking pokes out while she is sitting next to some kids.