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| FUN WITH JOHN AND JANE |
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mr and mrs smith
BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE PLAY A SUBURBAN COUPLE WITH AN UNUSUAL PROBLEM. IT ISN’T JUST THAT THEY WANT TO KILL EACH OTHER: KILLING PEOPLE IS WHAT THEY BOTH DO FOR A LIVING. ELEANOR SINGER REPORTS ON MR. & MRS. SMITH, A MOVIE WHICH COMBINES HONG KONG-STYLE ACTION WITH THE STRUCTURE OF A ROMANTIC COMEDY. |
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Long before he became a film student at New York’s Columbia University, Simon Kinberg had developed a passion for Hong Kong action movies. “They were so cool, sleek, sexy and kinetic,” he says. So, when it came time for Kinberg to write the screenplay for his Master’s thesis, he not unnaturally turned to his first love. “The Hong Kong action films became the impetus and framework for my original draft,” he explains. What he was looking for was one of those epic confrontations where characters are revealed and developed through action. How he ended up doing this turned out to be a little less predictable. Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the screenplay which, a good few years later, finally turned into a movie with a little help from Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, is a romantic action comedy starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. They play a couple of hired killers who happen to be married to one another without either knowing what the other one does. The two ideas may not seem immediately compatible: the relationship problems of the stars of Hong Kong action movies rarely receive much (if any) attention. But what took him down this route, explains Kinberg, was a dinner party at which two of his married friends told him they were going through relationship therapy. Without jettisoning the action concept, Kinberg began to take the therapy idea onboard as well. John (Pitt) and Jane (Jolie) originally meet in Colombia, where there is something slightly strange about the circumstances. They are both a little drunk and a lot attracted to one another, so dancing seems the natural thing to do. But straightaway there is a problem. “They are both leading,” says Kinberg. “Sometimes he leads, sometimes she leads; they’re competing.” The competition, however, eventually ends in a draw: John and Jane get married, and have been together for six years when Mr. & Mrs. Smith starts. But neither has revealed to the other what they do. They get by with little fights (and a few quite big ones) until one day the inevitable happens: they are hired to assassinate each another. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith is all about danger, sex and misunderstanding,” says Goldsman, who produces the movie, along with Arnon Milchan of Regency, Lucas Foster, and Patrick Wachsberger and Eric McLeod of Summit. “Rather than the traditional romantic comedy grammar, we have lots of action and bombs. But the action is secondary to character: the story is about a married couple being forced to hunt down and kill each other – and that forces them to pay attention to each other for first time in years. Learning the truth about one another, John and Jane Smith fall in love all over again.” |
