Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s Action-Romance Hybrid Kicks Ass and Kisses Its Source Material Goodbye

When Mr. & Mrs. Smith hit the multiplexes in the summer of 2005, bullets were fired aplenty, but they rarely hit their target. The film is chock full of gunplay, explosions, visual gags, one-liners, and hot people doing hot people things in a way we don’t really get to see on screen anymore. It had all the makings of a perfect summer blockbuster, but its focus was too diffuse, as if director Doug Liman wanted to make three separate movies (a spy thriller, a romantic comedy, and a class satire) but was only budgeted one. Never thrilling enough to be a thriller, funny enough to be a comedy, or romantic enough to be a romance, it was relegated to that nebulous zone of what I like to call “your mom’s favorite in-flight movie.” Though it became a box office hit and something of a sacred writ for Brangelina fans worldwide, Mr. & Mrs. Smith as a pièce de cinéma remains a product of its time—a missed opportunity overdue a second chance.

So it’s with great pleasure that I inform you that Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith is good. Quite good, in fact. Helmed by Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane of Atlanta, Prime’s eight-episode first season arrives less as a follow-up or even a remake of the 2005 film and more as a full-fledged expansion of its thin (though undeniably clever) basic concept. The show works precisely because, even as it maintains its foothold in that same wobbly genre mashup, it pins down a style that manages to pay homage to its originator while also cultivating a distinct tone that heightens, rather than mitigates, each of its generic components. In a TV landscape filled with rip-offs and repeats, Mr. & Mrs. Smith forms its own (secret) identity.

Premiering tomorrow on Prime Video, the new iteration diverts from the 2005 film in some key ways. The most obvious is that, whereas the movie hinged on the premise of an embittered couple discovering their partner belongs to a rival spy firm, the show centers on the relationship dynamic of two strangers-turned-spies-turned-spouses. John (Glover) and Jane Smith (Maya Erksine) are matched by a mysterious agency that requires that they forfeit everything from their past lives in exchange for a day job with killer perks—namely, a swanky Brooklyn brownstone, new sets of passports, and an armory that would make the NRA swoon. Each episode (with a couple of notable exceptions) is framed around a high-risk mission the pair must complete or face the cryptic consequences. Too bad the only thing more formidable than international espionage is domestic marriage.

If that all sounds a bit wink-wink-nudge-nudge, one of the more interesting aspects of the show is how deftly it avoids its schlockiest elements. The 2005 movie’s riff on upper-class suburban ennui was rather tired in conception and broad in execution. Sloane and Glover forgo such concerns and frame the Smith’s inevitable relationship problems as deadly serious, just as they frame their love for one another as deadly genuine. An episode consisting almost entirely in a couples therapist’s office (a nod to the original) skips over the overwrought jokes and cheesy gender roles commentary for at times ruthlessly-barbed, character-driven confessions. It’s an effective and affecting choice to pick out the most recognizable devices of the original and develop them into legitimate dramatic scenarios.

Yet, the show firmly has its eyes set on evoking the most important aspect of the spy genre: fun.

The action sequences mix grit with wit in equal measure, though sometimes surprise with their capacity for hyperviolence. A mid-season car chase and shootout in a seaside Italian village is a highlight, as is a late-season cat-and-mouse hunt across Manhattan. The show is also buoyed by a stacked roster of guest stars (so that’s where my Prime membership fees go each month). Nabbing the likes of Paul Dano, Michaela Coel, Ron Perlman, and Sarah Paulson is impressive enough, but I’m privy to episodes involving Parker Posey and Sharon Horgan, two out of three actors in this world whose mere presence I believe automatically makes any show they’re in better (the third actor on my list being any Muppet). 

It helps, of course, to have leads that can anchor the series’s delicate tonal balancing act. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s now-iconic on-screen chemistry came through from their ravenous eyes, a tendency for understatement, and how their perfectly chiseled abs and glutes seemed tailor-made for one another. Glover and Erskine’s John and Jane dynamic is rooted in a more relatable, breezy, adult rom-com sort of rapport that accentuates their differences while clarifying their mutual attraction. Arguments tend to rouse just as many laughs as dalliances, as John clamors to take more initiative and Jane works to veil her hardness of heart.

There is a dark, deliciously twisted sense of humor that courses through the show’s veins, though it doesn’t emerge as often as one might expect. Glover and Erskine are some of this generation’s most innovative comedic actors, and their gifts for improvisation spark up intermittently throughout (Erskine, in particular, has a moment in Episode 2 that caught me so off-guard I haven’t stopped thinking about it). But you wonder, if they weren’t so beholden to the conventions of the genres in which they’re working, whether they could stretch these moments further and play with the natural absurdities of their characters’ dilemmas to an even more comedic effect. The show, like any good agent, follows orders and stays on task, but one can’t help wishing it went rogue every so often.

It’s a minor qualm within an otherwise crackerjack of a season. If the series had been released twenty years ago around the same time as the feature film it’s based on, Mr. & Mrs. Smith would have been the type of mission-of-the-week series that could have recruited audiences and kept them hooked for the entire fall and spring seasons. The limited runtime hinders its potential (and creates a few overarching pacing issues, particularly around the unfolding romance), but the show makes up for it with a clear-sighted knack for a good time. It keeps its eye on the target, steadies itself, and pulls the trigger. Mission accomplished.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith premieres Friday, February 2nd on Prime Video. 

Michael Savio is a freelance writer and former editorial intern at Paste based in New York. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in cultural reporting and criticism at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

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