Mr & Mrs Smith (cinema)

Hitting the mark?

Everything about this film suggested success (there, I've gone and betrayed my verdict in the first sentence). A flash of Jolie thigh, Pitt looking ultra cool, Vince Vaughn's comic relief and lots of big guns and explosions.

Unfortunately here's a film that doesn't know what it is. It's not comedic enough, stylish enough or explosive enough. It's a bit of everything: not slick but scrappy. It draws heavily on Prizzi's Honor, True Lies and even the War of the Roses but lands unsatisfyingly somewhere between them.

Pitt and Jolie (yet again) are struggling without a script. Vince Vaughn doesn't need it but his comic relief is infrequent and histhe development of his character, that would have been so welcome, is sadly lacking.

There is a glimmer of chemistry between our Mr & Mrs but, I wonder... Neither of them usually has a problem demonstrating sex appeal but there's something muted and masked here: as though they're playing it down. To be honest despite their deliberate on-screen marriage problems bringing in some more of that reputed off-screen chemistry would make their characters that little bit more credible and watchable.