Mr. and Mrs. Smith

The title characters (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) are having trouble in their marriage; for one thing, they’re both secretly assassins for competing black-helicopter agencies, and they’ve just learned that their next targets are each other. Pitt and Jolie’s tabloid-vaunted chemistry is real enough, and Simon Kinberg’s script has its witty touches. (“I missed you, dear.” “I missed you, too.”) But the inventions run dry after half an hour, and the film dissolves into the routine displays of firepower that made up Kinberg’s other script, for XXX: State of the Union. Director Doug Liman hammers the action across in fast and furious style, hoping the sheer noise and body count will make us forget that the script is all beginning, with no middle and no end—the action simply stops, and the credits roll.