Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005 film)



The eponymous Smiths are a couple who have been married for five or six years. After meeting each other while vacationing in Colombia, the two married and settled down to a quiet, white-collar life in Suburbia -- which is now suffocating them.

In reality, John Smith (Brad Pitt) is a secret agent -- his latest assignment is to take out a hit on a man called "The Tank". By a staggering coincidence, his wife Jane (Angelina Jolie) is an assassin from a rival agency -- who is also set to take down "The Tank". Upon discovering each other's identities, the Smiths are told by their employers to take each other out, leading to results that range from your standard Slap Slap Kiss all the way up to Domestic Abuse. Things are not as they seem, however -- when both Smiths are attacked by their former employers, John and Jane realise that if they are going to live (and keep their marriage intact), they're going to have to work together both as assassins and as a couple.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, in spite of mixed critical reviews, did well at the box office and received a lot of media attention; this attention was mainly due to Pitt and Jolie meeting on set and, in their words, "falling in love" (even though Pitt was still married to Jennifer Aniston at the time). Critics who didn't enjoy the movie even admitted the the couple had great chemistry.

Not to be confused with the 1941 screwball comedy directed by Alfred Hitchcock (where a couple who have been married three years find out that they aren't really married) or the 1996 TV series (where two spies are forced to work together under the codenames Mr. and Mrs. Smith).

This film contains tropes such as:
""I can't believe I brought my real parents to our wedding!""
 * Air Vent Passageway: Subverted with security lasers.
 * Actor Allusion: Adam Brody is wearing a Fight Club shirt while being interrogated by Brad Pitt
 * John's yellow/orange sunglasses later in the movie are suspiciously similar to a pair seen on Tyler Durden.
 * Amazon Brigade: Jane's agency seems only to hire women, although their boss and at least some of their operatives (not seen) are male.
 * Armor Is Useless: Seemingly played straight until the penultimate scene, when they are shown to be wearing bullet proof vests.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Out of all the various things they've done to each other in the course of their cover... all the lies, fakery, and trying to kill each other... the thing that seems to upset John the most is that Jane hired actors to play her parents for events like their wedding and holidays.

"Mr. Smith: I don't exactly keep count, but I would say...high fifties, low sixties. I've been around the block, but you know the important thing is-
 * Audible Sharpness: Cutting bread should not be that loud.
 * Back-to-Back Badasses: Final Scene.
 * Battle Couple
 * Boyfriend Bluff: The Meet Cute.
 * Career Killers
 * Chained to A Bed
 * Contract On the Hitman: When both the agencies that the Smiths worked for found out who their spouse worked for they compromised and decided to put them on a collision course to take each other out.
 * Cover-Blowing Superpower
 * Dead Sparks: The Smiths' problem at the start of the film.
 * Destructo-Nookie
 * Dish Dash: When Jane catches the wine bottle it signals the Internal Reveal.
 * Double Entendre: Because the violent nature of the couples interactions are a metaphor for their rocky relationship it's only natural that we get a few of these, including:

Mrs. Smith: Three hundred and twelve.

Mr. Smith: Three hundred and twelve? How?

Mrs. Smith: Some were two at a time."


 * Certain cuts of the film have John's line, "Does that include innocent bystanders?" (followed by Jane smacking the mesh barrier between them), partly because people thought they really were talking about sexual partners.
 * Dueling Stars Movie
 * The Elevator From Ipanema: Twice. Once before a shootout once after.
 * Extended Disarming: While doing the tango, I might add.
 * Fan Service: The scene where Angelina dresses as a dominatrix is really important to the plot. Honest!
 * When you have two people who are consistently voted the two most attractive people in the world, it was inevitable. Let's consider the entire second half of the film. Jane is wearing a man's T-shirt that just barely functions as a miniskirt. John is in nothing but a tight V-neck and boxers.
 * Foe Yay: Heck, they're already married.
 * Fun T-Shirt: "The Tank" is seen wearing a Fight Club T-Shirt. And the universe imploded.
 * This probably doubles as an Actor Allusion.
 * Handguns: John's handgun gives him the edge during the house-fight.
 * Good Cop, Bad Cop: During the interrogation scene with . Subverted in that they both try to play the bad cop.
 * Hidden Supplies: Of weaponry.
 * Hitman With a Heart: Though they don't have problems killing their targets or other professionals (guards and soforth), they do seem to try and avoid innocent casualties. John even takes the time to shout warnings and get civilians to run away when he's just ditched a bomb.
 * During the fair scene, John casually hands one of the stuffed toys they won to a little kid.
 * In Love With the Mark
 * Internal Reveal: Both of them find out the other's identity when they are assigned to take out the same target, but neither knows that the other knows. John deliberately drops a wine bottle as a test, which Jane passes (or fails depending on your perspective) when she catches it.
 * Interrupted Intimacy: Their bout of Destructo-Nookie is interrupted by their neighbours...who bring the police.
 * Kiss Kiss Slap: As well as Slap Slap Kiss.
 * Knife Nut: Both are good with knives, but Jane seems to have a particular fondness for them.
 * Latin Land: The Smiths first met in Bogota In Name Only.
 * Lipstick Mark: Not exactly. In one scene, John comes home, slips on his wedding ring, and looks at a red stain on his collar. Suffice it to say, he wasn't having an affair, and the red stain was bit more organic in nature than lipstick.
 * The Masochism Tango: Literally.
 * The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Or rather, smother your marriage.
 * Mating Dance: Aforementioned tango. Played straight during their first meeting in Bogota.
 * Meganekko: Gwen(Michelle Monaghan)
 * Missing Trailer Scene: Due to over an hour of scenes being cut before release, the trailers were filled with these. Most notably, every scene with Keith David and additional scenes with Vince Vaughn.
 * Mr. Smith: & the Mrs.
 * Mundane Utility: One of the early hints at Jane's secret life comes when she fixes the way a curtain is hanging by balancing perfectly on a chair that is standing on only one of its legs. In stilettos.
 * Murder, Inc.: And its rival company Death Co.
 * Mysterious Employer: Helps drive the plot.
 * Not Staying for Breakfast: Subverted. In Colombia after they first meet, Jane wakes up to find John gone. He then walks into the room carrying breakfast.
 * Paid-for Family: Jane's parents.
 * Playing Drunk: In the scene where we find out that John is an assassin, he pretends to be drunk and wanders into a room full of targets, asking for a round of poker. He sits down and plays cards with them, tricking them into letting their guards down and eventually shooting them all to death.
 * Properly Paranoid: Both the Smiths have taken extreme precautions for just about any scenario... except realizing their spouse is a rival agent. Even then, many of the precautions come in handy; John can't even be voice-traced from the answering machine message because he's made sure to include electronic distortion as if it were malfunctioning.
 * Real Life Relative: Not at this stage but soon afterwards.
 * But already well publicized before the movie came out, to the point that some initially assumed that this was a Gigli-style attempt at capitalizing on their romance. Apparently, they fell in love on the set.
 * Recycled: The Series: They tried to do this with this film.
 * Relationship Reboot: Invoked by John once they decide not to kill each other, and start telling the truth to one another: "We're going to have to redo every conversation we've ever had."
 * Resignations Not Accepted: Neither of them.
 * Romance On the Set: Pitt infamously left Jennifer Aniston for Jolie while filming.
 * Shaking Her Hair Loose: Jane goes to see a mark pretending to be a prostitute with her hair pinned up. The first part of the seduction is shaking her hair out.
 * Slap Slap Kiss: or more truthfully Bang Bang "Bang"
 * Smithical Marriage: When they first meet, John and Jane hook up with each other pretending to be a couple to escape the Colombian authorities. However, they don't register under Smith, which is a pity.
 * Spy Couple: Slightly subverted in that they don't actually know it.
 * Stocking Filler: Jane wears garters for one of her jobs. And knives.
 * Super Multi Purpose Room: John and Jane both have a Wall of Weapons - his under the shed, hers inside the oven.
 * Table Space: Not quite super long but otherwise there.
 * That Poor Cat: Heard when John is rushing through the bushes to the house.
 * Throw It In: The scene where John accidentally shoots through Jane's windshield was supposed to have him hopping over the last fence, but Brad Pitt actually tripped and broke the fence. However, his muttered line of "Oh, Dear God!" as he rushed through the mangled fence was so amusing that the director kept the scene the way it was.
 * Tuxedo and Martini: Jane's agency is full of flashy technology and attractive women. John is more of the "Stale Beer and T-Shirt" variety of spy.
 * This is reflected in almost everything they do. Jane's away-from-home workspace is in an upscale office building, John's is a little back-room upstairs office. Her weaponry is behind an elaborate sliding-away oven, John's is in a cellar under the toolshed. She sets up with a top-of-the-line sniping rifle and sighting equipment, he pretends to be a scruffy nobody taking a piss and tries to take out the target with high explosive.
 * On the other hand, John identifies Jane by recovering her laptop and tracing one of the chips, like a proper hi-tech spy, while Jane does it by seeing John's walk and identifying him by instinct, just using her gut.
 * Villain Protagonist: Both of them.
 * Violently Protective Wife: By the end of the movie.
 * Uptight Loves Wild: A shade of this. Jane meticulously plans everything out. John prefers just to wing it.
 * Was It All a Lie?: Both John and Jane suspect the other of lying about their love for each other, but neither is willing to admit their own in case the other uses this to try and kill them.
 * What Could Have Been: Brad and Angelina were both replacements when filming began to snarl. Before the two of them were confirmed, others such as Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Nicole Kidman, and Catherine Zeta-Jones were considered. Now try to imagine both A) the movie with any combination of the previous actors, and B) a world without Brangelina.
 * Why Am I Ticking?: John gets a bomb placed in his jacket.
 * Used almost word for word - "Excuse me, did you know you're ticking?"
 * You Have 48 Hours: To kill your husband/wife.