Your marital problems ain't nuttin'

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2006)
Starring: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt
Director: Doug Liman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

John and Jane (Pitt and Jolie) meet by chance while both are on business in Bogota, fall in love, and get married a few months later. However, their separate professional lives and the secrets they are keeping from each other soon take a toll on their marriage, as they are both professional assassins working for competing firms. The truth comes out when they are both assigned to take out the same target.


"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is a fun action movie that manages to dish out quite a bit of commentary on marriage, love, and friendship in between shoot-outs and chases. The film's a bit slow in its wide-up, but once it gets going it keeps you engaged. The action's okay and the jokes are funny. (The freeway mini-van chase is particularly exciting AND amusing.)

Pitt once again shows that he's one of the funnest actors working today, and Jolie pulls off a great assassin-turned-suburban housewife routine. Both stars also manage to present characters that are both tough and vulnerable (at least as far as one another are concerned).

There's no deep messages here, and the action scenes aren't groundbreaking, but aside from a slightly sluggish start, there's nothing particularly bad about the film. It's one of those where you can just turn off your brain and laugh at the mayhem.

When Spies, Lies, and Morons Collide....

Burn After Reading (2008)
Starring: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, David Rache, and J.K. Simmons
Directors: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When a pair of dimwitted health club employees (McDormand and Pitt) find what they believe is a disk full of highly classified CIA secrets, their get-rich-quick efforts set in motion a series of events that shows that no one causes chaos like the very stupid.



"Burn After Reading" is a movie about hopes, dreams, lies, deception, and betrayal. It's got all the elements you find in spy movies, but they're found here in a story of cheating spouses--half the characters in the film are breaking their marriage vows spectacularly--a burned-out CIA analyst (played by John Malkovich), and the people at the CIA who are so concerned with secrecy that they can't take the simple step of asking "what the hell are you morons doing?"

The purposefully tangled mess that is the movie's plot gains its comedy from the fact that the smartest people in the world can't figure out what a pair of doofus are up to (nor the real causes for the events they set in motion) and it's a source it taps very well.

Hilarious performances by Brad Pitt as the dumbest health fanatic ever, George Clooney as the horniest government employee ever, and Tilda Swinson as a woman so bitchy no-one even dares to imply she's bitchy stand out in particular in this perfectly cast and skillfully acted and directed film. If you liked movies like "Fargo" and "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", you'll get a kick out of this one as well. It's not quite as good as either of those two films, but it's still fun.

'The Devil's Own' is a movie he can keep

The Devil's Own (1997)
Starring: Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A New York cop of Irish background (Ford) becomes host to an IRA terrorist (Pitt) who is the United States to buy weapons.


"The Devil's Own" spends much of its time in an offensive romanticising of a filthy bunch of murderous terrorists. The ONLY thing this movie gets right about Northern Ireland, the IRA, and Americans of Irish heritage is that Americans of Irish heritage either were too stupid or intellectual lazy to see the IRA for what they rea,lly are. (My money's on intellectually lazy... because Americans of Arab background or the Muslim persuasion are as stupid about twisted freaks like Hamas as the Irish-Americans used to be about the IRA.)

While the film does have some nicely done action sequences, there is too much offensive pablum here for me to recommend even watching it for that. (And why couldn't Brad Pitt hold his accent for more than one or two lines? Did he really choose to badmouth the film before it came out because he knew that he sucked worse than the script he was performing?)