“Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” premiering Friday on Prime Video, features Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in a series “inspired by” Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s 2005 feature film about married killers who look assigned to kill each other. Not surprisingly, it's much more the offspring of Glover's “Atlanta” than the movie, and if you're more interested in glamorous thrills than scruffy human comedy, you may be disappointed, though maybe pleasantly surprised.
Along with co-creators Glover and Francesca Sloane, “Atlanta” alumni working here include producer Hiro Murai, who directs the pilot and an additional episode, and director of photography Christian Sprenger, a declared favorite of this department, who also directs and has a talent for what we might call evocative clarity. (He calls it “controlled naturalism”). Like “Atlanta,” he has a shaggy-dog quality, with a moderate interest in plot and a deep investment in mood and character. It's more fantastic than “Atlanta,” which could be quite fantastic, but just as ordinary, in the best way.
Glover and Erskine play the pseudonymous John and Jane Smith, strangers who, after one-on-one job interviews using a computer terminal, find themselves paired in a sham marriage and housed in an elegant New York brownstone, where they await orders. . These come by text message, are as sketchy as a technical challenge on “The Great British Baking Show,” and begin with a cheerful “Hello, hello.” Each is a kind of failure: John was discharged from the army (“I wouldn't call it dishonorable, but they can call it whatever they want”); Jane tried to join the CIA (“They said she had antisocial tendencies”).
“Nowhere else would take me,” Jane admits.
“If it makes you feel better, no one would accept me either,” John says.
Because the Smiths don't know who they're working for or the purpose of any of their assignments, which, unlike the Impossible Mission Force, they can only choose to accept, and which come three strikes and that's it. politics, or whether its targets are sinners or saints, there is for the viewer the initial task of reserving judgment about two people we are supposed to like and feel for. We've certainly seen more than a few sympathetic killers on screen, including the movie Smiths, but here, strategically, we see the pair kill only (well, mostly) in self-defense or unknowingly. They also get other types of jobs. We are not asked to love murderers.
Jane Smith (Maya Erskine) is still a killer in this version of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, but the focus is less on the action and more on the relationship between the spies.
(David Lee/Prime Video)
Although Glover and Erskine are pretty people, they are not the avatars of supernatural Hollywood perfection that Pitt and Jolie are, but rather a brighter version of the rest of us, recognizably normal, which fits the series very well. (Though Glover did turn a profit for the role, as we are regularly shown.) It's what sets it apart from other spy stories. John and Jane spend most of their time waiting, and while they wait, they talk, not only about work, but also about bagels, cartoons, and flatulence. It's a reunion thriller.
This is a story about secrecy and intimacy, cooperation and competition, affection and discontent, and various challenges, smaller and larger, that will be familiar to almost anyone who has been in a relationship for any length of time. John and Jane clash over issues of control, jealousy, and appreciation, even as they can be awfully sweet to each other. In action movies, everything is generally subordinated to the plot. (And the stunts and gadgets). Here, the emotional arc is what matters. Once James Bond had feelings, there was nothing left to do but kill Daniel Craig.
Not that the action, which seems designed to honor the genre, isn't impressive, exciting and wonderfully executed. We have car chases, subway chases, hand-to-hand combat. There's the classic Minding of a Difficult Prisoner (Ron Perlman) and a sequence set at a high-profile art auction that puts Glover in a Bondean tuxedo and Erskine in a slinky red dress. We visit the snowy slopes of the Italian Dolomites, the shores of Lake Como, Italy, and various corners of New York City, where there are people to follow, run away from, or shoot.
The season is well-equipped with top-notch guest actors, including John Turturro, Michaela Coel, Parker Posey, Paul Dano, Sharon Horgan, Sarah Paulson, Billy Campbell and Alexander Skarsgård. But the show belongs to Glover and Erskine, who play well together, in harmony and dissonance.
As always, he is a friendly, interesting and discreet presence; His John is the more open of the two, sociable, good with people (and loves his mother). Jane is more cautious, which makes it especially moving to see her subtle sparkle and her growing vulnerability as the couple's fake relationship becomes real. Erskine, previously best known for playing her high school self on “Pen15,” is absolutely wonderful in the role, and one hopes for another season if only to maintain that performance.
