In 2005, the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith brought together the two sexiest movie stars in a simple and fun adventure: Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie) and John Smith (Brad Pitt) are hitmen, married, but they don’t know the true mutual profession, which often places them as competitors. Their relationship is strained because secrets get in the way of their intimacy, but when they are hired to kill each other they have to decide: do they want divorce, widowhood, or reconciliation?

The film is a series of situations to show the beauty and agility of its stars, wonderful and so perfect that behind the scenes they went to live a happy marriage of 10 years and now they are another 10 reproducing the hatred on the screen in real life. That, of course, is another story. Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a vehicle originally designed for Nicole Kidman and Johnny Depp and today it is a new series on Amazon Prime Video, with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, made available in full this week on the platform (different, isn’t it?).

The process of rescuing the film and breaking it into episodes was somewhat tumultuous. The original pair was incredible: Donald, star, and showrunner of the acclaimed Atlanta, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, at the height of Fleabag fever, would work together behind the scenes and on screen, sharing the credits. From the announcement in 2020 to the actress’s departure from the project in 2021, the series was ‘on hold’ for 12 months, with Donald Glover taking the lead alone. In other words, four years later, we have the result in our hands.

We women and Phoebe’s fans worry about her leaving due to ‘artistic differences’ and I wonder what she would have brought to the project. In Donald’s view, it was necessary to change what he thought was missing in the film, precisely the connection between the couple before the conflicts that were the basis of the original story. To achieve this, an important change was made: John and Jane Smith get married KNOWING exactly who they are and this is, in a way, the basis of the romance and conflict between them. It seems little, but it changes everything.

It always bothered me that the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith was blatantly inspired by John Huston‘s great Prizzi’s Honor, a 1985 film that featured Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner as two married assassins hired (unknowingly) to kill each other. Anjelica Huston won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and the film’s plot is smarter and more morbidly fun to create its challenge, straight out of the 1982 book that is the source material for the story. What was missing in Mr. and Mrs. Smith and what Donald Glover wanted to bring to the series is where John Huston’s film surpassed its imitation. But it wasn’t used again, which is a shame.

In the Amazon Prime series, John and Jane, codenames for two young people who don’t know each other, are hired to live as if they were married, in a luxury house in New York, receiving different high-risk missions and accumulating a fortune as a result. He’s romantic, she’s practical, and adjusting their styles demands mutual trust, something more challenging when they’re attracted to each other but trying to maintain professionalism. Of course, they fall in love and when we reach the end of the season, a scene full of Easter eggs for those who saw and enjoyed the film, we have another view of the two. In this, Donald Glover was successful.

The other fun alternative is to create one mission per episode, featuring famous artists in curious spots and allowing following each one’s killing styles. Despite being a duo, John and Jane don’t know their bosses personally (an allusion to Charlie’s Angels?) and this is a seed of contention as their competitive nature is used to push them apart when they are most in love. There is also a list of suspects of who is behind the orders for the murders (Paul Dano, playing the nosy neighbor is the most obvious) and the other couple of “John and Jane Smith” (Wagner Moura and Parkey Posey) appear as mentors and questionable figures, they look like they came straight out of the movie Killers (the romantic comedy with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, from 2010). In other words, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a mix of everything you’ve seen before in spy films: luxury, foreign and sometimes exotic settings, explosions, deaths, and no consequences. Pure fun.

And here’s what the film caught and the series ‘missed’: there is no deep seriousness in John and Jane Smith’s relationship. What kept them apart was not knowing that they were in the same field and with that resolved, they became even more dangerous. By reversing the situation: love makes them more vulnerable, and it creates a dramatic plot that has no echo in the psychopathy of the characters, hired killers who make fortunes by killing criminals.

Here is the main spoiler, new, anyone who had seen Killers had already realized that the chance meeting between the Johns and Janes Smiths was very suspicious. When commenting that their specialty was killing other Johns and Janes, John (Moura) and Jane (Posey) warned Jane (Erskine) and John (Glover), but their inexperience prevented them from associating what was happening. Likewise, the material he finds at his neighbor’s house – with photos and drawings of the house – that John doesn’t realize is the mysterious Hihi.

The most positive thing about the formula established by the series, in addition to having one mission per episode opening the window for special appearances, is the suggestion that we can also have different Johns and Janes Smiths per season, as it doesn’t matter who is in the role as it is. just a codename. That’s right, we said goodbye without knowing for sure whether Jane (Erskine) managed to save John (Glover), or whether the other Jane and John (Posey and Moura) also got away with it. An ultra-interesting alternative that deserves praise!

What about Maya Erskine? Her mission was the most difficult of all because she was replacing none other than Angelina Jolie and an imaginary Phoebe Waller-Bridge, something terrifying for anyone, especially if she is not yet famous. She does wonderfully well, both in the action, comedic and dramatic scenes. She has leadership and charisma, she held her own well alongside Donald Glover, a star who has a huge fan club.

Therefore, while waiting for confirmation as to whether there will be a second season, the open points may also take a long time to be tied up if different couples are chosen at each opportunity. Mr. and Mrs. Smith must not have killed the couple and if they return, now they will be together trying to discover the person who ordered their sentence (as in the film) and then decide whether the marriage will be valid between them. What do you think they will do?

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