Mr. & Mrs. Smith celebrates its tenth year anniversary today so in lieu of diamonds (which we hear is what's customary on this occasion), here's Manuel offering up some choice words about the lovely couple -- who knew they'd make it this long!? Or that it would take them another 10 years to co-star again (By the Sea, opening this November)
I remember it vividly. Some friends and I caught a weekend screening of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the film that had brought two of Hollywood’s biggest stars together (yes, cinematically, but also, as it turned out, romantically). The gossip mags had gone insane but we were obviously more excited about the film itself which we’d heard was slick and enjoyable. This was peak charming Brad (Snatch, The Mexican, Ocean’s franchise) before we’d lose him to more highbrow fare that only sporadically allows him to slap on a smirk and a winking look. It was also a transitional moment for Jolie coming as it did after a string of artistic and commercial flops (Life of Something Like it, Sky Captain, Alexander) and reinvigorated her career as an action star beyond Lara Croft. In a way, it was lightning in a bottle...
No wonder it went on to gross almost $500 million worldwide, then a record for both stars.
The opening scene is, ten years on, a rather brilliant aping of reality TV confessional framing used to delineate the flailing marriage of the film’s title. How can such a static frame crackle with so much chemistry? More importantly, how did these two beautiful and charming people meet?
Inquiring minds want to know.
“It was in Colombia.”
“Bogotá. Five years ago.”
“Six.”
“Right. Five or six years ago.”
What follows almost made me walk out of the film altogether [Spoiler alert: I stayed and thoroughly enjoyed myself].
But today, on the film’s tenth anniversary, I wanted to return to that one scene in “Bogotá, Colombia.” It’s so sloppy even by Hollywood’s self-centered standards that looking back on it I’m surprised it made it into the film at all. This is what Bogotá looks like in the film:
If you knew nothing about Bogotá (full disclosure; that’s where I grew up) you probably nodded your head and sort of bought this image of the city as a tropical paradise afflicted by drug lords and militarized police. I’m not one to bark back against the one-dimensional take on Colombia that focuses solely on its drug and civil war; clearly that’s an unfortunate reality, though the film feels more at home depicting Medellin in the 80s than Bogotá in the 2000s.
More egregious is the film’s lack of understanding of Colombian geography. Any simple Google search would tell you that Bogotá is an urban center with almost 7 million people located in the Andes mountains and more prone to freezing thunderstorms than the sexy summer shower that greets Brad and Angie as they dance the night away. Their gorgeous white linen attire (not to mention the seemingly oppressive heat) suggest a beachside locale, something so far from Bogotá that this blip of a scene haunts me to this day, so appalled I was by its flagrant ignorance.
It’s as if I decided to set a film in Chicago in the 1950s but shot it in Miami and populated it with Al Capone. It’s all just off.
For those of us who didn’t grow up in the US, the experience is a familiar one. Heck, since moving to New York, I sometimes can’t even stomach the made-up geography of the New York City-set but soundstage-shot sitcoms! It may seem like such a small detail but whenever I think of the film it is the only thing that comes to mind. Which is crazy because its action sequences are ace, its mix of sex and comedy is perfect, and its conceit a fascinating blockbuster riposte to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Have you ever had a small detail like this one diminish your appreciation for a film that otherwise enthralled you?
What’s the thing you remember the most about Brad and Angie’s film?