eating cucumbers without permission...

When I was younger, I watched an uncomfortably large number of action movies, all kinds. They were usually divided into movies with explosions and movies with fighting, but some even had both!!1 (Was there ever an easier audience?) A surprising amount featured underground hand-to-hand combat arenas, and had names like “Deathfighter III: the Bloodening”.

And now, equally uncomfortably, I’ve become inordinately fond of romantic comedies, at least partly because they engender more warm, fuzzy feelings than a guy getting his legs broken in the semi-final by the evil Muay Thai master.

It’s not surprising, then, that I enjoyed “Mr. & Mrs. Smith“, which I’ve mentally placed in the genre of “romantic comedy with violence”. “Grosse Point Blank” is the only thing that’s come close.

The surprising part was that it succeeded far better as a romantic comedy than as an action film. Other than the excellent chase sequence, and to a lesser extent John and Jane’s fight at the house, the action was uniformly uninspired. When the climactic gunfight is boring, you know you have a problem. The dialogue, on the other hand, was consistently amusing — when it comes down to it, even the chase was memorable chiefly by virtue of the Smiths’ repartee.

Not a classic, but worth watching at least once.