Marriages can make or break in the first seven years, unless you are a couple whose expiry date has a serial monogamous average of less than two years, in which Hollywood marriages are plainly susceptible. The seven year itch is explored in director Doug Liman’s Mr and Mrs Smith, proving the director is adept at dark comedy as well as punctuating scenes of intelligently stylish action.

 John and Jane, played by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, meet each other in Bogotá, Columbia, and embark on a passionate six month courtship which results in marriage. Warnings are made about not taking the plunge too quickly. John’s friend Eddie (Vince Vaughn) is the single guy living with his mother who spouts from his experience that physical attraction wanes and friendship lasts.

 The story takes us through their sixth year together and they are in fact re-establishing the marriage after a hasty start: they are getting to know one another in case that part was missed in the initial euphoria six years earlier. And it is an amusing and thrilling ride.

 The opening sequence works its way through marriage clichés (disagreeing over curtains, plumbing difficulties, etc) until it is revealed that they are both assassins. They face off after an assignment they both inadvertently are on goes wrong and Jane must subsequently eliminate John.

 This is not shocking since they are in the throes of discovering whether two people can live together without going crazy. The crunch is when the lid is popped on their secrets and what they discover about one another in the process, through car chases and high rise towers. The movie says it is better to get to know those secrets and move on. Hope for marriages today? Perhaps although Mr and Mrs Smith is not committed to future certainties when it comes to these relationships. So, it is not surprising that this subtly derides middle class values and society where the two protagonists are ill at ease because they are living a lie.

 Diversion therapy for couples in the audience or not, the movie is contrived, a hybrid of True Lies meets War of the Roses, but does so with a cohesive and artful stylishness by a director who knows how. Liman directed The Bourne Identity (2002) and Go (1999). The second half is constantly good which includes an unusual scene where John and Jane fight with guns and fists and their house becomes badly in need of redecorating. It is certainly a change of tone from the earlier John and Jane we meet, which was more like Ken and Barbie. Fortunately, the movie takes off.

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