A Brad Pitt Blockbuster Is Climbing The Streaming Charts
A look into the immense vault of Brad Pitt films is sure to find at least a few favorites for any audience.
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A look into the immense vault of Brad Pitt films is sure to find at least a few favorites for any audience. The 58-year-old actor and producer has spent the last few decades proving his worth in Hollywood as a multi-faceted talent, and possibly the most attractive man in Hollywood. While ranking Hollywood’s hunks’ long list of films is debatable, one, in particular, has been climbing Hulu’s streaming charts.
Currently, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is sitting pretty at the number two position for viewership on the streaming service’s charts. The film is best known not only for headlining two of Hollywood’s most desired celebrities, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but for kindling the affair-turned marriage between the co-stars. Debuting in 2005, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is part screwball, or romantic comedy, and part action thriller. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play married assassins who spend a great deal of their time fighting with each other as they come to terms with the fact that their marriage is becoming stale and outdated and set out to seek counseling. Not knowing the secret identity of one another, the couple is assigned to kill each other, leading to some sexually driven jam-packed action sequences.
Before even premiering, Mr. & Mrs. Smith alluded to a box office hit. Both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s casting couldn’t have been a better match as the duo were praised for their on-screen chemistry, despite it being the first time the celebrities worked together. Since the film relied heavily on sexualized violence, it also helped to showcase two of the most sought-after celebrities side by side. Similarly, the film hit a nerve with audiences as a strong marital story. After rekindling the spark and realizing the couple is still madly in love with one another, the Smiths show off their different fighting styles as they band together to take down the assassins sent to take both out.
The story surrounding Mr. & Mrs. Smith actually dates back to Alfred Hitchcock. The 1941 film with the same name was directed by the renowned filmmaker. And although the film didn’t feature any deadly assassins, much of the plot details surrounding marriage were the same. When the film was reimagined in 2005, the updated version came from the mind of the 2005 version’s screenwriter, Simon Kinberg. After listening to friends going through therapy for their marriage, Kinberg recalls the notion seeming “aggressive and mercenary” and he thought it would make an interesting template for a relationship inside an action film. Surprisingly, the film was originally set to cast Nicole Kidman alongside Brad Pitt. After a lengthy mixup of big-name celebrities in consideration such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cate Blanchett, and Gwyneth Paltrow, it was Angelina Jolie that eventually landed the role.
At the box office, Mr. & Mrs. Smith opened with decent ratings as it topped movie charts opening weekend. The film accrued over $50 million during the opening week and went on to gross over $186 million in North America and a worldwide total of $478 million. At the time of release, it was the highest-grossing film for both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The immense monetary success of the film was surely delightful for filmmaker Kinberg, who admitted that the film went $26 million over budget and had to scrape pennies from his personal savings to finish the film.
Without a doubt, having plenty of commercial success on screen, Mr. & Mrs. Smith did suffer plenty of mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave Mr. & Mrs. Smith an approval rating of 60% based on 215 reviews, with an average score of 6.10/10. The site’s critics consensus reads, “Although this action-romance suffers from weak writing and one too many explosions, the chemistry generated by onscreen couple Pitt and Jolie is palpable enough to make this a thoroughly enjoyable summer action flick.”
While the consensus on the film’s reception is quite debatable, there is no denying the overwhelmingly scandalous reason the film remains popular on streaming today. With Mr. & Mrs. Smith being the first time Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie worked together, the duo sparked a real-life romance on set. While love stories among celebrities are often similar, the news rocked the world, as Pitt was at the time still married to the Friend’s alumni, Jennifer Aniston. After Aniston split from Pitt in January 2005, Brad and Angelina became the most talked about celebrity couple. Spending twelve years together and marrying in 2014, the real-life couple went through their own Mr. & Mrs. Smith snafu, splitting in 2016.
While you can check out Mr. & Mrs. Smith currently streaming on Hulu, fans of the blue-eyed celeb can expect to see plenty more of the actor in the future. Brad Pitt is set to have a small role in the upcoming rom-com action film, The Lost City, which premiers on March 25th. Similarly, Pitt is set to star in an upcoming action thriller, Bullet Train, and the period drama, Babylon, later this year.
