Blu Ray Screencaps of Mr & Mrs Smith.
This is the French edition and as a bonus features the directors cut of the film, there is also lots of additional extra content on the disc but it is in 576 PAL so may not work in some territories.
Angelina Jolie was asked if she wanted to be a Bond girl, her reply was that she wanted to be James Bond, in this movie you can see why as Miss Jolie is well suited to action scenes and holding her own against male competition.
Nicole Kidman was originally cast as Mrs Smith but dropped out, Johnny Depp was at one point to have been Mr Smith but his committment to other film projects meant he had to drop out.
Mr & Mrs Smith are both assassins, they work for rival agencies and live a normal life, neither are aware of each other's real job.
One day Mr & Mrs Smith are assigned to kill the same man and only then do they discover the truth about each other, their agencies are not too happy and assign them the task of killing each other, do they choose to carry out their contract or continue in marriage guidance!
This movie is a lot of fun, it has chemistry between the lead actors and assured direction by Doug Liman, i also liked the music score, for this directors cut edition you get six extra minutes of footage, this includes an extension to the love scene between Jolie and Pitt and changes to some of the interactions between Mr and Mrs Smith, changes to the soundtrack are also present with The Dust Brother's soundtrack for Fight Club being added to some scenes, indeed near the end of the film you can see a character wearing a fight club t-shirt.
I wasn't aware of any changes made to the violent scenes in the film, even the love scene is not very graphic but apparently was too sensual for the American PG-13 certificate.
The 35mm prints of this film come from a digitally grain reduced digital intermediate, it had many grain reduction artifacts, this helps explain why the film looks the way it does on blu ray where i saw a number of artifacts when i increased my brightness levels, watch it on a calibrated display and you will likely only spot a few such as in the scene near the beginning of the film which has strobing lights during the dance sequence between Jolie and Pitt, check screencap 15 below for this example and remember it does not look that bad on a calibrated display, it seems this is a direct result of the noise reduction applied to the film's digital intermediate. Therefore what we get on blu ray is a representation of the way the film looked in cinemas.
At the one hour and 7 minute mark i thought the scene in the restaurant looked like it had some background noise issues, again thats likely due to what they did to the digital intermediate.
Its a shame they felt the need to grain reduce the digital intermediate and that all 35mm prints come from this, this is something reviewers will need to take into account on this film and many others, not always easy to assess and i would hope that the film makers just use low grain film stock and the right type of film lenses and filters in future, perhaps they should even consider shooting the film digitally if they want lower film grain present in the image.
The sound mix is active with lots of fabulous front, centre and rear sound activity, the music score is good and stays in your head long after the film is finished and the subwoofer goes deep with well controlled bass. There is a lot to like here, i feel it's a reference sound mix.
The disc features DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtracks in both English and French.
I enjoyed Mr & Mrs Smith and would love a sequel, i'm glad i imported this edition as its not available as a directors cut in the UK or North America, i think the image quality is representative of the release prints but bear in mind any image artifacts present are because of the grain reduction applied to the digital intermediate and not because it was applied to the blu ray.
View blu ray screencaps of Mr & Mrs Smith below. Click twice for the full HD image.
