Mr. & Mrs. Smith is the kind of film that happens when an action flick, lonely and drunk on Jeager, depressed from striking out all night and just barely able to stand runs into a self conscious, awkward, but attractive, light romantic comedy in the back room of a smoky bar. Maybe there’s Dire Straights or Kenny Loggins on the jukebox, but most likely it’s Barry White, and that’s when things take a turn for the funky.

The result is that Hollywood can now, finally, stop making movies. They’ve solved the equation, balanced out both sides, cross-canceled and simplified. In short they have found the lowest common denominator. Of course, they won’t stop. Now they can just apply the formula in all sorts of “witty” and “intriguing” ways – or – for the extremely creative, they’ll just insert the sexy hot star of the moment. The work is done, now it’s just time to sit back and reap the benefits.

That isn’t to say that the film isn’t a good time, because it is. We all know my weakness for the light romantic comedy is only tempered by my love of action flicks so this film seems to have been made directly for me. I didn’t even mind the fact that it starred Angelina Jolie as Jane Smith. For many, that’s a selling point – me, I wish she’d crawl back into the pile of dung that spawned her. Brad Pitt, on the other hand, as John Smith is right up my alley. Aside from 1994 (which brought us Interview with the vampire and Legends of the Fall) his career has been filled with great roles.

The plot is pretty straight forward, and we like it that way damnit. Boy and girl meet while both trying to hide from the police. Boy and Girl don’t realize that they’re both assassins so they have a sham wedding; each thinking the other is their cover. They settle down and each pursues their own killing career and get more and more bored with each other. Eventually the two get called to the same hit and the whole tissue of lies gets crumpled up, matted with blood and blown to smithereens. It is here that we see what ever Hollywood couple is missing from their relationship, a prolonged knock down drag out medieval fight that ranges throughout their whole perfect little house smashing it to pieces. I believe that this is a lesson to be learned by all not just Hollywood couples. It’s perhaps intentional that the film begins with the couple in marriage counseling when; really all they needed to do was spend half an hour beating the shit out of each other… To think, all that money wasted. But don’t think it ends there – after the makeup sex, it’s time to go get the real bad guys… What real bad guys? Well, I’d hate to spoil the “surprise”.

The only downside to being manipulated as I was with this film was the fact that I realized it – while I was watching. The director Doug Liman who brought us the Borne Identity films (and little else) was successful in those films because the audience was supposed to feel alien and aloof sort of like Jason Borne. John and Jane are very passionate their work (and each other) being withdrawn from that makes it difficult to keep our minds and senses in the film.

And would someone, please, STOP HIRING VINCE VAUGHN? That’s right, he adds no value to this film, AGAIN. He gets set up through the whole film to either be the villain or the comes-through-in-the-end friend and he ends up as just being written out all together. Sure, he has a couple of good lines and his character is funny enough, but he’s not around enough to be the comic relief and the film didn’t need it anyway.

Overall the movie is a great time and should work out well for dates, I encourage all to try their therapy techniques (specifically the exploding gas line) to work out the problems in your relationship. If you don’t think you have problems in your relationship, wait until she sees the look on your face when Angelina Jolie steps into the dominatrix outfit… Enjoy!

Mr. & Mrs. Smith opens Nationwide Friday June 10th.

Dave can be reached at dkerr@detroitbuzz.com .