In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play husband and wife that both live secret lives as professional hitmen for competing assassin-for-hire companies. When discover each other’s secret, their marriage counseling gets an unexpected kick in the pants. Not since Grosse Point Blank has contract killing been so whimsical, and not since The War of the Roses have marriage problems inspired so much property damage. But as little more than a showcase for celebrity posturing and director Doug Liman’s knack for proper action cinema, Mr. & Mrs. Smith holds few surprises for summer audiences.


Mr. and Mrs. Smith, probably not their real names, live in an affluent suburb. Very careful to mask their careers by being the perfect husband and wife to each other, they blend in well to the cozy doldrums of their neighbor’s lives. This careful attention to their roles even extends to their respective covers; Mr. Smith keeps his guns hidden in the garden shed while Mrs. Smith stores hers in the oven. As a bit of a screwball comedy, the film revels in its snarky descriptions of gender differences. And though it pokes fun at itself, it does end with husband and wife finally coming to grips with their respective roles. It is just a pity this pointed humor doesn’t extend to other elements of the storyline.


About halfway through the film, after they have started working together, they need to make a fast getaway in a neighbor’s minivan. These are the same neighbors that played Amy Grant in the background during a recent neighborhood gathering, so we already have them pegged as far less savvy than the two stylish assassins next door. And if you look really closely in the chase scene that follows, you can see one of those little fish symbols that Christians are fond of affixed to the lower left corner of the trunk. Liman seemed pretty intent on making sure that we see it. A few other details are inserted to make sure that we know these neighbors are Christians of the most garish sort. And just in case we didn’t pick up on these jibes, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (having fled in their undies) are forced to wear gaudy nylon jackets emblazoned with “Jesus” after they ditch the van.


The few times we do see these neighbors, they get the traditional Flanders treatment. This is fine at first, as the film’s comedy derives from pushing its stereotypes too far. But the fact that the script goes so far out of its way to identify these neighbors as Christians is interesting. What is the point? So they become embroiled in a violent car chase in a minivan, the traditional transportation of the soccer mom. I understand how this incongruence adds to the comedy. Especially with Mrs. Smith, a highly trained hitman (sorry, “hitperson”) standing in for the soccer mom. But why does this need to be a distinctly Christian minivan? It may be that Christians don’t generally drive about shooting at other vehicles, and here are two assassins driving a Christian minivan while trying to kill the people chasing them. Hitman ethics certainly don’t include “turning the other cheek.” But it seems to me that most people don’t drive about shooting other people, so the fact that this is a Christian minivan isn’t a logical necessity for the comedy. It could just as easily be a Buddhist, Christian Scientist, or agnostic van. It would actually have been funnier if there were an NRA sticker on the bumper.


The way this sort of comedy works is that everybody, screenwriter, director, actors, and audience all agree to accept the characterizations or stereotypes in the film as much larger than life. And by pushing them to comical extremes, we may just learn something valuable. These are caricatures, not editorials, so we agree not to take them very seriously. But the caricature of the “Christians next door” to Mr. & Mrs. Smith doesn’t seem to work the same way other caricatures in the film do. While the gender stereotypes end up finding closure in a successful marriage counseling session that ends the film, these overdrawn Christian neighbors are left dangling pointlessly many pages back in the script. The carcass of this bullet-ridden Christian minivan sits on a curb somewhere in Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s town only as a reminder that Christians are easy targets.


Thankfully, this pointless caricature shoots itself in the foot. The one emotionally realistic scene in the film occurs towards the beginning of the film in these neighbors’ house as Mrs. Smith holds a baby awkwardly and the audience watches her grimace; she seems to realize that she isn’t capable of such domestic pleasantries. Maybe here the script tips its hand to the fact that maybe Christians aren’t so stupid after all. My quibble here is not that Christians are being made fun of in a summer blockbuster. Quite often we are begging for it. But this doesn’t mean that audiences must swallow half-hearted comedy because a half-decent script doesn’t have enough muscle to see its caricatures through to their conclusions.