Mr. & Mrs. Smith
2005 · Directed by Doug Liman
Woke Score
CriticCritic Score
Audience
Based
Critics rated this 33 points above its woke score. Among Based films, this critic score ranks #277 of 345.
Representation Casting
Score: 35/100
Kerry Washington appears in the cast, providing minimal but present racial diversity. The film makes no particular effort to highlight or interrogate this representation, treating it as background casting.
LGBTQ+ Themes
Score: 0/100
No LGBTQ+ themes or representation present in the film. The narrative is entirely heteronormative and provides no engagement with queer identity.
Feminist Agenda
Score: 50/100
Angelina Jolie's character is portrayed as an equal professional and combatant to her male counterpart, with no diminishment of her agency or capability. However, the film does not consciously engage with feminist theory or make explicit statements about gender equality.
Racial Consciousness
Score: 5/100
The film contains no meaningful engagement with racial themes or consciousness. Minority characters appear as supporting players without any narrative focus on their racial identity or experience.
Climate Crusade
Score: 0/100
No climate-related themes, messaging, or environmental consciousness appears in this action-comedy. The narrative is entirely indifferent to ecological concerns.
Eat the Rich
Score: 0/100
Despite featuring assassins working for competing corporations, the film contains no critique of capitalism or class systems. The corporate structure is treated as mere plot scaffolding.
Body Positivity
Score: 5/100
The film features two conventionally attractive leads and contains no meaningful engagement with body diversity, disability, or non-normative physicality.
Neurodivergence
Score: 0/100
No representation of neurodivergent characters or conditions. The narrative contains no engagement with neurodiversity.
Revisionist History
Score: 0/100
The film makes no historical claims or attempts to revise historical narratives. It is a contemporary action-comedy with no historical dimension.
Lecture Energy
Score: 10/100
The film is primarily concerned with entertainment and spectacle, avoiding any preachy or preachy tone. Its indifference to ideological messaging means minimal lecture energy, though occasional action-movie one-liners verge on mild commentary.
Synopsis
A husband and wife struggle to keep their marriage alive until they realize they are both secretly working as assassins. Now, their respective assignments require them to kill each other.
Consciousness Assessment
Mr. & Mrs. Smith arrives in 2005 as a stylish action vehicle that, by accident or design, stumbles into a premise of domestic gender parity. The film's central conceit requires that Angelina Jolie's Jane Smith be every bit as lethal, resourceful, and professionally accomplished as Brad Pitt's John Smith. She is not his subordinate, nor his rescue object, nor his motivation. She is his equal competitor, which at this particular moment in cinema history registers as mildly progressive, though the film itself evinces no particular interest in interrogating what this equality means. The screenplay treats their mutual competence as a plot device rather than a statement.
Beyond this accidental feminism, the film operates within the most conventional parameters of mid-2000s action cinema. There is no racial consciousness to speak of, no engagement with class critique despite its protagonist assassins, no climate content, no disability representation, no revisionist historical claims. Kerry Washington appears in the cast list, providing the film's only meaningful representation, though her screen time is negligible. The film's energy is relentlessly surface-level: explosions, wisecracks, product placement, the carefully choreographed attraction between two impossibly beautiful people. There is no lecture here, only spectacle.
What saves Mr. & Mrs. Smith from scoring lower is the simple fact that Jane Smith is never diminished within the narrative. She outsmarts, outfights, and outlasts John with regularity. The film does not congratulate itself for this equality, nor does it deconstruct the implications of female lethality. It simply presents two assassins of equal capability and moves on. This is not social consciousness, precisely, but it is at least not hostility to it. The film occupies a strange middle space: too commercially conventional to be read as genuinely progressive, too indifferent to ideology to be read as regressive. It is, in the end, a glossy action film that happens to star a woman as a fully realized agent of her own story.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Critic Reviews
“Expertly tossing off the type of well-sharpened banter that was the domain of Gable and Lombard and Tracy and Hepburn, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie -- no matter what their off-camera status -- make one swell combative couple.”
“A full-on action flick, subversive rom-com and weapons-grade star vehicle that’s drenched in Tinseltown glitz, from a director who knows how to put the money on the screen while his tongue’s firmly in his cheek.”
“A cool summer thriller whose laughs don't slow down the suspense.”
“The film is glossy, but awful. Frenetic, but awful. Expensive, but awful. ... And awful.”
Consciousness Markers
Kerry Washington appears in the cast, providing minimal but present racial diversity. The film makes no particular effort to highlight or interrogate this representation, treating it as background casting.
No LGBTQ+ themes or representation present in the film. The narrative is entirely heteronormative and provides no engagement with queer identity.
Angelina Jolie's character is portrayed as an equal professional and combatant to her male counterpart, with no diminishment of her agency or capability. However, the film does not consciously engage with feminist theory or make explicit statements about gender equality.
The film contains no meaningful engagement with racial themes or consciousness. Minority characters appear as supporting players without any narrative focus on their racial identity or experience.
No climate-related themes, messaging, or environmental consciousness appears in this action-comedy. The narrative is entirely indifferent to ecological concerns.
Despite featuring assassins working for competing corporations, the film contains no critique of capitalism or class systems. The corporate structure is treated as mere plot scaffolding.
The film features two conventionally attractive leads and contains no meaningful engagement with body diversity, disability, or non-normative physicality.
No representation of neurodivergent characters or conditions. The narrative contains no engagement with neurodiversity.
The film makes no historical claims or attempts to revise historical narratives. It is a contemporary action-comedy with no historical dimension.
The film is primarily concerned with entertainment and spectacle, avoiding any preachy or preachy tone. Its indifference to ideological messaging means minimal lecture energy, though occasional action-movie one-liners verge on mild commentary.