"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Summer Movie Flashback: Mr. & Mrs. Smith

tn_mrandmrssmith

2005
2005

MR. & MRS. SMITH is an action comedy from Doug Liman, the director of THE BOURNE IDENTITY and JUMPER.  It has had a bigger imprint on pop culture than JUMPER because it caused Brad Pitt to ditch the lady he was with at the time and stick with his wife in the movie, LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER THE CRADLE OF LIFE star Angelina Jolie. The two play John and Jane Smith (of course), who have been married for “5 or 6 years” without knowing that each other are highly skilled assassins for rival secret organizations. It’s kind of like TRUE LIES I guess but less hateful, more equal (though also the action, like the movie in general, is not as huge).

John works out of a cluttered headquarters like a construction office, his partner a misogynist loser who lives in his Mom’s basement (Vince Vaughn, his shtick already pretty worn out by that point). John keeps his weapons in a secret bunker under the tool shed. Jane’s firm is a high tech MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE type joint in a high rise. She seems to be the boss, pampered by an all female, all model staff including Kerry Washington. At one point she tells two of them to make her coffee. Her weapons, of course, are in a secret compartment under the oven.

They didn’t realize it but they met overseas when they were both on missions. So they’re not surprised about each other’s constant business trips. We see them on the job, Jane undercover as a dominatrix, having to rapell out a tall window, John wandering fake-drunk into a back room, dumb-charming his way into a poker game until the target shows up. Only after they get sent out to the desert after the same target (Adam Brody), and even then not right after the bat, do they figure out each other’s secrets.

So then they try to kill each other. Jane finds his stash, clears him out, they both go to live at work, there are car chases, he locates and attacks her office, her and the ladies fire grappling hooks out the window and zipline to safety on another building. John calling her “Chicken shit!,” her yelling back “Pussy!” And she gives this smile that means she still likes him.

mp_mrandmrssmithThat’s the tightrope they’re trying to walk, with mixed results I think. You gotta not take it literally, otherwise this is a movie about a husband and wife trying really hard all night to horribly murder each other, setting off explosives and earnestly firing off hundreds of rounds at each other, repeatedly chasing and trying to outsmart and ambush each other to death. Which, in my opinion, is not as charming as sweet as this movie is clearly trying to be. Because all the while they are flirting and sort of remembering that they care about each other. And then throwing knives.

You just gotta accept it, and you gotta believe that nobody would notice them throwing knives at each other on a crowded dance floor, or that 5 minutes of automatic weapons fire in the living room would draw a comic check-in from the neighbors and not a squad of police in kevlar.

In the middle of a lengthy and surprisingly hard-hitting hand-to-hand fight a remix of “Express Yourself” by Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band pops in awkwardly. What, express your feelings by stomping on your spouse? Or is this beating a metaphor for an open and honest communication, an expression of their frustrations? I don’t know, but it seems kinda like a desperate plea to show that it’s supposed to be fun and not upsetting. Hey everybody, husband and wife are trying to beat each other to death in the living room, let’s dance!

I don’t know, it’s weird, but when they get tired of fighting, and they’re impressed by each other’s skills, they start laughing and next thing you know they’re fucking and then they’re hanging out together in their underwear in their wrecked home, drinking wine out of broken glasses. Now that they know each other for real it’s like they’re starting over with a new first date. And I gotta admit it’s kinda charming how real their attraction obviously is. (Sorry, Jennifer Aniston. No offense. And thanks for reading outlawvern.com by the way that’s awesome)

I think the stranger part of the movie is when they team up, though not all of the bickering humor works. I like how John becomes kind of protective, giving her gun tips and stuff, and calling her “sweetie.” The action is well done and debris intensive. I like the earlier car shootout better than the climactic department store one.

But I don’t know about the running gag of him hating her cooking. This is 2004, the wife is not always expected to do all the cooking. If you don’t like it cook it yourself you dick. It seems like kind of an evisceration of standards that don’t really exist anymore. On the other hand this is a wife who’s very capable, possibly more capable than the husband, not an idiot like Cameron Diaz in the similar-toned KNIGHT AND DAY.

The worst thing about the movie is the score by John Powell. I suspect it would work alot better if the music was treating it seriously, but instead it’s some “isn’t this whimsical?” comedy bullshit. I’m against it.

The best thing is the chemistry between Pitt and Jolie, and that Pitt is pretty funny in it. The ultimate combination of these two qualities is during the shootout at the end when Pitt is sneaking around and he starts clowning by swinging two big wrenches and making a face, and Jolie laughs. It seems like it might’ve been something he genuinely did just to make her laugh.

He plays kind of his funny-dumb guy, so out in the desert, unaware that he’s being spied on, he takes a piss and accidentally gets some on his boot and that’s why he misses his target. I also like when he figures out that his wife is a killer and his response is “Sweet Jesus mother of God.” Not theologically sound, but provides the desired effect.

The script was a spec by Simon Kinberg, who had done xXx: STATE OF THE UNION, later did some X-MEN movies and now is working on STAR WARS movies. He and Liman tried to turn this into a TV show with Martin Henderson (TORQUE) and Jordana Brewster (FAST AND FURIOUS SAGA), but it didn’t air. I’ll give him some credit for this but I think it goes a little too cute and obvious for my tastes. It seems a little too confident in how hilarious and subversive it supposedly is that this good looking couple with the nice house are actually killers. But I like the exchange “I missed you.” “I missed you too.” At first I thought they were being sarcastic and then I realized they were talking about guns.


This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 27th, 2013 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

54 Responses to “Summer Movie Flashback: Mr. & Mrs. Smith”

  1. yeah, I saw this movie but it wasn’t very memorable, though I do seem to remember the action scenes being competent and not filled with shaky cam like it would be today, which is ironic considering it came from the director who helped start that trend

    but ah, 2005, that was a pretty great year for me, it’s special to me because it was the last year that I didn’t have a computer or the internet, so it was the end of an era

    but it was also the year when anime’s popularity in the States was at it’s absolute peak, I mean it was just on fire, it was a great year to be an anime fan, too bad it would all go bust in just a few years

  2. I found this film an obscenity, just utterly vile. Unbearably smug, it amounted to little more than tons and tons of money being thrown at a celebration of A-List egos with no wit or style and very few ideas behind.

    So it’s not a film I much fancy revisiting, ta

  3. Just yesterday I wondered if Doug Liman will ever be relevant again. First he had this 90s indie cinema one-two punch of SWINGERS and GO, then he re-defined the spy movie by making it more “realistic” with THE BOURNE IDENTITY*, but after MR & MRS SMITH, which at least got lots of publicity due to its real life humpery, he kinda disappeared. JUMPER was so blah, that even the people who saw it (including me) can’t remember much about it and I didn’t even know his last movie FAIR GAME, which came out in 2010, existed until I checked his IMDb profile a few minutes ago. His next movie is apparently a big SciFi movie with Tom Cruise, so I guess it will underperform in the US and make good money in Europe, but will be forgotten before it hits home video.

    *And no, his movie didn’t have any post action scenes. That only came with the sequels and Paul Greengrass

  4. I actually think this is a funny concept, but absent the genial good humor of the leads there just aren’t too many funny jokes or gimmicks. Because it’s not very funny, they have to dial back everything else so it doesn’t seem too upsetting. So then you got a film which is not only not very funny, it’s not very *anything*.

    However, I do like the use of Joe Strummer and the Mescalero’s “Mondo Bongo,” a very good song for their initial meeting and also nicely reduxed at the climax. It’s mysterious and romantic and strange, and briefly lends the film a completely unearned sense of wistful romance.

  5. Agreed with Pacman, i thought this was a terrible film, even though i like Pitt and Jolie and was looking forward to it. All i remember about it is there was stuff in the trailer that wasn’t in it, Keith David was prominently billed but may have only been on a screen, and that i generally just absolutely hated it.

  6. Terence Stamp even got cut out of the movie completely!

  7. saw this in the theater when it came out and it just slid off my brain so easily that i cant really remember anything about it.

  8. This is basically exactly the kind of Hollywood movie I hate, because they spend some ungodly sum of money on this mostly boring monstrosity, enough money to probably fix a few serious, real-world problems… and the only thing the movie has going for it is the charm of its leads. Just millions and millions of dollars blown on lousy action scenes and explosions and special effects, and all anyone ever liked about this dumb movie was the romantic chemistry of Pitt and Jolie. Just, ugh.

  9. Yeah I don’t usually label to many films terrible but this one definitely qualifies. It was painful to sit through. Definitely a career worst moment for everybody involved especially Liman.

  10. I actually remember this as the worst major Hollywood studio picture I’ve ever seen, meaning that it’s obviously not the worst, but probably the one I’ve outright hated the most. Doug Liman must be the very definition of a soulless hack, and I find Pitt & Jolie to be utterly charmless in this. Has any of them ever been worse? And this is a film who’s only selling point is their “chemistry”. Eeech. Kill me now. On top of all that, I remember intensely disliking the action scenes. The single worst moment must have been that 360° circular shot of the titular characters trying to look cool while shooting people and stuff. Only thinking about it makes my blood boil to a degree that shaky post-action a la almost equally talentless Greengrass can’t even come close to.

    I can think of few things worse, though the music video remake with Busta Rhymes and I forget who (google reveals it to be will.i.am and Kelis) was I guess even worse. Surprised at the positive take on this. But at least someone here agrees this is terrible.

  11. I don’t get the hate for this movie. If you look at it – like me and my wife did – like one of those romantic comedies Aniston/Butler/Vaughn/Bullock etc, etc does all the time, this actually has some funny lines, some good action and reasonably attractive leads. It worked for us on a Saturday night.

  12. pegsman,

    so your defense of MR AND MRS SMITH is that it’s about as good as a Vince Vaughn or Sandra Bullock movie?

  13. Dan — in his defense, it actually IS a Vince Vaughn movie.

  14. I’m jumping on the bandwagon of hate for this movie – I found it kind of boring and full of unlikable characters and a half-baked script. I really like Angelina Jolie in real life but this role and this performance is why people who hate her hate her.

    Good question wabalicious, where did Keith David go? Wasn’t Angela Bassett supposed to be in this as well? I can’t even remember what was in the trailers and what was in the movie because the whole movie seemed like a trailer. And where did Vince Vaughn’s character go? (Or Kerry Washington or Michelle Monaghan’s, or…) The whole thing reeks of rewrites and last-minute reshoots and focus group bullshit. Not saying there needs to be a main villain reveal or they destroy their agencies or anything, but I don’t get how the climactic battle solved any of their problems. They’re still hunted and on the run, right? (Though apparently they still see the same therapist at the end??)

  15. Yeah, I don’t get the vitriol either. Is it great? God, no. I can’t even classify it as good. The best I can say about it is it’s slight. And I just can’t bring myself to villify a slight movie. I do agree the tone of the movie is all over the place, and the climactic shootout in the big box store is really underwhelming, like there was an extra five minutes cut from the film where Brangelina have to kill Kerry Washington and Vince Vaughn or something.

  16. Very unremarkable in just about every category. This is the sort of movie designed to be seen 3 years later on FX.

  17. Paul Whose Computer Has Packed In

    August 27th, 2013 at 3:18 pm

    I have no idea how good or bad most of this movie is… because I couldn’t get part the first half-hour. Didn’t get it, I guess.

  18. Dan, no I said that it’s better. Not great, but absolutely not worth hating.

  19. I agree, there’s no reason to hate on it, especially compared to the shit from these last few summers. The leads have good chemistry, the action scenes are comprehensible and have some fun hard hitting moments, Pitt gets quite a few funny badass moments. It’s very forgettable, largely due to an ending that just kinda fizzles out and doesn’t know how it wants to end, but terrible is a real stretch.

  20. I don’t hate this film. I’m sure I remember seeing a deleted scene that was a big shootout in a supermarket and being surprised that they would piss all that money away.

    I know it’s cheesy, but I fucking love that bit where they are standing back to back and shooting in slow-motion, giving eachother tips, reloading eachothers guns and especially when they do that dual-wielding pistol embrace. There’s something swooningly romantic about it. It’s like the heterosexual version of THE KILLER or HARD BOILED. It could have been executed better, but I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.

  21. The three things I remember about this movie…

    1) I think Keith David plays a silhouette? Made me wish there was a version of this movie with him and Angela Bassett in the leads. I hope it’s not fanboy talk, but I’d legit love to see David in more meaty acting parts.

    2) The ending indeed felt weirdly truncated. But what I remember the most about it were the two leads taking what I figured was an unreasonable amount of bullets. Movies always try to make you think a dude can keep going after getting shot once or twice, but this one certainly pushed that a bit.

    3) I’m glad you mentioned the leftfield use of “Express Yourself.” Take that song away, and that brutal scene where Pitt and Jolie fight is essentially an extended spousal abuse sequence in a major PG-13 movie. I was very uncomfortable then, I’d probably be repulsed today.

  22. Interesting. I’ve always really liked this movie. I’m a huge Liman fan; I like the way he shoots action scenes that are comprehensible, and I sometimes dream about how good the subsequent Bourne movies would’ve been if he’d stayed in the director’s chair.

  23. Other than the hotness of Angelina Jolie and the big fight in the house I was kind of meh on the movie. I actually liked more the SIMPSONS parody of it in one of the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes with Homer and Marge as assassins who are married to each other but don’t know it. It’s one of the funnier episodes of the show in the past ten years.

  24. What a piece of shit this film turned out to be. Utter dreck, although I have to say I hate Jolie with a passion. She’s so adored and revered by so many whereas, when I look at her she comes off as the biggest phony in Hollywood.

    Talk about no sense of humor? She takes first prize in that contest.

  25. GQtaste – I can’t think of one movie featuring Angelina Jolie that I’ve ever enjoyed. Maybe HACKERS and possibly CYBORG 2 but outside of that? nothing. Her most highly praised performances in GIA and GIRL INTERRUPTED were true exercises in overacting. So hammy they made my fillings hurt and the mediocrity of the movies themselves doesn’t help their cases.

    With that said. As a human being she never came across as disingenuous to me ar all. Certainly not in the way that somebody like Sean Penn has. I mean she’s the daughter of one of the most well off actors of the 70’s. She doesn’t have to be doing half the shit she’s doing and traveling to most of the most rundown places she’s ever been too while exposing herself to probably malaria and polio on a regular basis.

    It’s not like there’s much for her to gain from this at all and she hardly publicizes any of it and yet she still does it and she does it with a smile on her face without having cameras following her around. That’s kinda admirable considering how spoiled and self centered a lot of other second generation hollywood people have ended up. So while I don’t like Angelina Jolie the actress either and never understood the hype I could say that Angelina Jolie the person gets an A+ in my book.

  26. oh yeah, GIA’s a pretty bad, overwrought movie…..

    but there is one good thing about it

  27. by the way fellas, any thoughts on 2005 at all?

    I didn’t see too many movies that year in theaters, I don’t remember it being a very interesting year at all for movies save for BATMAN BEGINS and KING KONG

    I saw THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE and God did it suck, I remember the audience laughed at it several times, it was around that time that I decided to give up on mainstream horror movies for the most part

    then I saw a movie called THE GREAT RAID and literally the only thing I remember (I couldn’t even tell you who was in it) is that so much of the film was shot at night that when the titular raid happened the gunfire literally hurt your eyes with it’s brightness, when a movie is literally painful to watch, that’s not a good sign

    and finally there was REVENGE OF THE SITH, which, like everyone, I only saw with a “let’s just get this over with” attitude and of course it was terrible, what more do you need to say other than “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

    6 years of that bullshit and it was all leading up to that fucking “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”, I actually laughed when it happened, that’s what it was all building up to?

  28. I watched this movie I guess a couple of years after it came out…I remember not enjoying it at all, find it boring, but beyond that, I can’t actually remember anything about it.

  29. Griff, here is the thing: I don’t remember anything about 2005, except for the movies. And even there it’s just SIN CITY, KING KONG and ROTS. (I think I didn’t watch BATMAN BEGINS until it hit home video in early 2006.) And the thing about ROTS is that while I enjoyed the previous two prequels, this was the first SW movie, that left me unsatisfied, although all the other nerds were praising it at this time at the best SW movie ever or at least since EMPIRE. (Of course meanwhile they hate this one too.)

    Personally I think this was a good year. I met my girlfriend (who I’m still together with) and had success in my job at a small advertising agency. Although we had one big job, that nearly drove us insane. (I think it was that year. Maybe it was the one before.) A local bank celebrated its 150th anniversary and we were supposed to do all their commercials and the visuals for their big gala. All that with only three or for people and while our boss took lots of other jobs too. And of course the demands from that bank were often insane, but because they were our biggest customer, we just smiled, nodded and did everything they wanted with a “Yes sir, thank you sir, whatever you want”.

    That went even so far that pretty much two or three hours before the gala started, we had to remove a big chunk of the opening movie, which then didn’t make much sense anymore. But the one thing that still hurts me today, was one pre-taped segment during the show, in which we had interviewed citizens on the street and asked them to congratulate that bank and tell us what they wanted if it would grant them one wish.

    One part was shot at a kids disco and of course nearly all of these kids said something like: “I want money!” So I cut all these replies together very fast for comedic effect (“Money! Money! Money! 100Euro! Money! Money!”) and ended it with a little girls saying: “I want a pony”. And it was something that made everybody laugh! It was the perfect ending! But shortly before the gala, the host demanded to put another guy at the end, after the little girl. A famous japanese conductor who sent his birthday wishes in his native language. Because the host apparently had a gag that he wanted to use for his next presentation.

    Anyway, to make it short: Everybody laughed so hard at the little girl wishing for a pony, that nobody paid attention at the Japanese guy anymore and the host’s “great gag” turned out to be a racial pretty insensitive “Ching chang chong” gibberish, while he entered the stage.

    But yeah, since this was apparently the worst thing that happened to me this year, I think 2005 was okay.

  30. This film float through purely on the charisma and the sex appeal of the two actors, and the sexy coolness of their high tech movie spy jobs. All the undercurrents of dysfunctional marriages and domestic abuse are easily glossed over.

    It would be interesting to see a remake of this. The exact same movie but starring less attractive actors, with characters with uglier jobs, and grittier, less slick blockbuster direction. I wonder if the audience would laugh if instead of Pitt having a fight with Jolie, Steve Buschemi would be kicking the shit out of Amy Ryan in some grungy low rent apartment.

  31. Do i remember this right, maybe i’m wrong, but didn’t Doug Liman totally fuck this film up, have to do huge reshoots and went millions of dollars overbudget? If so that might explain why it’s so jerky, with characters disappearing, people (like the aforementioned greats Keith David and Angela Bassett) getting short shrift and a lot of bits that are in the trailer but not actually in the film itself.

    I think Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are both excellent actors, they’re normally charismatic and seem like decent people, but this film somehow made them seem like boring robots. I was just looking on IMDB for info about it and found this; “The original ending featured villains played by Jacqueline Bisset and Terence Stamp. After this was dropped, a second ending was filmed with Angela Bassett and Keith David as the villains. This too was dropped when it was decided that the film did not need a final confrontation with the villains at all.” An action film where there’s no final confrontation with the villains? Who thought that idea up? It also went through 50 drafts of the screenplay. 50 drafts to get to that?! It just seems pretty clear Liman was totally out of his depth with this film.

  32. Wabalicious – wow I knew something about David and Bassett but Bisset and Stamp as well? Jeez they were really making this movie up as they went along.

    I liked Go so I tried to give Liman some benefit of the doubt for this misifre, but holy crap has anyone here SEEN Jumper? That’s a movie that REALLY epitomizes everything wrong with Hollywood – unlikable, smarmy hero who can’t act, zero chemistry with the leads, Sam Jackson racking up that paycheck, and of course a story with no ending that seems to exist only to set up a franchise and sequels that never happened (At least Mr. and Mrs. Smith had no ending but didn’t tease a sequel) I don’t care if Liman wasn’t responsible for most of it’s faults but this was a two strikes and you’re out thing for me. (even though I’m sure i’ll see his next one)

  33. I give JUMPER this: It makes teleporting look pretty cool at times.

  34. neal2zod – Yeah JUMPER was a real piece of shit. Liman’s two popcorn movies after BOURNE IDENTITY (which I did like) have been mediocre and beyond lame. Now he’s got a new movie with Tom Cruise that’s basically the actioneer GROUNDHOG DAY apparently.

    He did direct the non-actioneer FAIR GAME, which I’ve not seen.

  35. wabalicious – well Liman was sorta out of his depth on the production for BOURNE IDENTITY as well when you read about it. The studio was especially pissed when he apparently used some of the crew to light up a paintball game he was played with his buddies. The movie’s release date was delayed a whole year at one point. So yeah Liman wasn’t invited back for the sequel, which is interesting because he was the one who got the film rights from Ludlum before he died and started the franchise.

    I seem to remember Damon once describing more or less the difference on those BOURNE films between Liman and Greengrass. Both work in chaos, but Greengrass will be finished by the deadline. Liman doesn’t give a shit about deadlines but will keep working until he’s satisfied.

  36. I saw JUMPER in theaters no less because I wish I could teleport anywhere in the world in real life, but yeah, it was pretty bad, not even a character with the same first name as me won me over (though the scene where they teleport into a swimming pool with a bunch of screaming kids was pretty funny at least)

    I don’t know if it’s still going, but that seemed to be a trend for a few years of B-action/adventure movies that would always come out in February, I saw PUSH the following year and while it was pretty mediocre it was better than JUMPER at least

  37. oh yeah, did I mention I saw PUSH on a DATE!? with a GIRL!? who had pretty big BOOBS!?

    it went nowhere sadly though, but that was her mom’s fault, not mine

  38. Aw man, PUSH! That’s another one from a director who seemed to have the potential of being the next big name, but then kinda disappeared. (Although in all fairness, he is one of the people behind SHERLOCK, which should count as success.)

  39. I guess you guys will be glad to hear that Liman is working on JUMPER 2 these days.

  40. As much crap as I just talked about Jumper, I wouldn’t really be opposed to Jumper 2 since it seems the first one sets up tons of shit that doesn’t pay off. If I remember correctly doesn’t he walk by a TV showing poor people of color being swept away in a flood and he kinda smirks? Not only is that insane for a movie that came out relatively close to Katrina, but it’s not like he starts using his power for good at the end or anything. (I think I heard the Jumper novels eventually turn him into a superhero, literally dropping Islamic terrorists off the top of the World Trade Center or something?)

    Yeah I always associate Push with Jumper in my mind too – it’s also way too exposition-heavy and also has no freaking ending and refers to characters that you’ll never see until the non-existent sequel, but at least that one has a pretty awesome (if completely inappropriate) performance from Dakota Fanning and it looked amazing. That was weirdly the first movie I rented on Blu-Ray and I couldn’t believe how eye-popping the colors were.

  41. “If I remember correctly doesn’t he walk by a TV showing poor people of color being swept away in a flood and he kinda smirks? Not only is that insane for a movie that came out relatively close to Katrina”

    oh yeah, I forgot about that, that was such a weird scene because it shows him realizing that he could help those people but he doesn’t, which just made him look like an asshole

    why would they intentionally make the main character seem like an asshole?

  42. pegsman – I’m sure Liman is “working” on it like those THE DEPARTED and INSIDE MAN sequels which were announced and then quietly died to everybody’s indifference.

  43. hahaha, I forgot about those proposed sequels

    what the would INSIDE MAN 2 have been about I wonder?

  44. Think about it, how many crazy sequels wouldn´t we have had if some insane asshole got his way?

  45. Hell on the announced-sequels-which-didn’t-happen topic, its like that MORTAL INSTRUMENTS sequel that was already announced (Signourney Weaver had signed on for a part and everything) and already in pre-production and scripts already written before MI belly flopped last weekend.

    Don’t be shocked if that recently “announced” WORLD WAR Z sequel (despite either breaking even or coming close) silently fades away as well.

    Griff – I know, right? At least the proposed DEPARTED sequel with Marky Mark’s character dealing with Nicholson’s older brother Robert DeNiro that’s the Mayor/Governor (can’t remember) in the fallout from that film.

  46. INFERNAL AFFAIRS, of which THE DEPARTED was based on, did have two sequels

  47. Shoot, first you call me “grandpa” and now “insane asshole”?

  48. “MI belly flopped last weekend.”

    THANK GOD for that

  49. That last part was not deliberately pointed at you,Big daddy. I am not in any way implying dementia.

  50. RRA – I think a World War Z sequel is a real possibility. It did gross $526 million worldwide. That’s a pretty big haul even for a troubled $200 million production.

    They’ll keep Pitt since he’s an international draw and one of the main producers. But Forster is sure to get the boot. He let the production go to shit, fought with Pitt and is the easiest part in the machine to replace.

    Of course, the studio also has a large part of the blame, but I’m sure a sequel is still a very attractive proposition. Provided they’ll be able to put together a package of writers and a director who are willing to play ball and will deliver on time and on budget.

  51. I like the gloss of this, although the only real worthwhile moments for me are:

    1 – Keith David
    2 – The ‘Lucky’ scene – Brad Pit”s idiot drunk is good
    3 – The meal
    4 – The car scene

    finally, and most importantly, the one thing that actually makes me enjoy this film

    5 – ‘The new curtains are hideous’

  52. @neal2zod/RRA, yeah it sounds like Liman’s approach of working in chaos was maybe suited better to his smaller, more comedic films, where improv might have been appreciated. I can see why the studios would be annoyed with him if that approach was causing delays on Bourne and Mr & Mrs Smith: a big budget juggernaut like that needs to run smoothly, not have some dude who’s out of his depth treating it like it’s the same as one of his smaller shows. I can never understand why studios hire certain directors for certain films, and then go “waaaaah!! this guy doesn’t know how to operate within our parameters!”, after they’ve given the guy $150M and let his piss it up against the wall. That whole thing on IMDB about Terence Stamp and Jacqueline Bissett in Mr & Mrs Smith, wow, i genuinely couldn’t believe that. What kind of ramshackle outfit does Liman run, and what the hell were the studio thinking letting him run riot like that?

    I’ll be honest, i really enjoyed Jumper, hahaha, i believe i’m one of only 3 people in the world who did. I thought it was fun, but i was shocked that lovely Diane Lane was playing a mother of some teen twerp. I always think of her as Ellen Aim, young and delicious, knocking out the Jim Steinman tracks. Someone mentioned Push above; it sounded familiar, so i looked it up on IMDB. After reading the synopsis i still don’t know if i’ve seen it or not. It seems so familiar, but it’s one of those “they advertised it so much” films that i maybe saw the trailer a few dozen times and just felt as if i’d seen it.

  53. I’ve just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It’s going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.

    It can only be attributable to human error.

  54. Griff: 2005 was all about MUNICH, HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, JARHEAD, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. BRICK, BROKEN FLOWERS, THE CONSTANT GARDNER, SYRIANA, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, THE NEW WORLD, LORD OF WAR, and KISS KISS BANG BANG for me, so it wasn’t too bad from my perspective. Also DOMINO (despite Vern’s admittedly funny take-down of it).

    2 things I remember from this is Angelina’s character as a dominatrix, and seeing ad’s for this during every commercial break for Live8 (the overall pop culture memory from 2005 was seeing Pink Floyd together again).

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