HONEYMOON ENDS QUICKLY IN 'SMITH'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

IN ``Mr. & Mrs. Smith,'' Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play professional assassins, married to one another for the better part of a decade, who don't know what the other really does for a living.

At first, this seems like a darkly playful metaphor for the things that spouses never understand about their mates, no matter how long and how intimate their union. And it's played with as much sophistication as such a contrived conceit can be these days. Director Doug Liman (``The Bourne Identity,'' ``Swingers'') is a smart guy, and there's a witty framing device in which the couple discuss their difficulties - the ones they know about, anyway - with an unseen marriage counselor.

But after John and Jane Smith are set up to kill one another, the movie more or less dispenses with character-based comedy and becomes a one-joke affair for a while. Both outraged to learn about the other's secret life, not to mention professionally obliged to complete their missions, John and Jane fight it out with fists, booby traps and artillery.

Unpleasantly wearying as that quickly gets, surviving to the third act just means getting battered by the kind of over-the-top, ballistic mayhem usually associated with a Joel Silver action movie. The last thin connections to other love-is-a-killer comedies such as ``Prizzi's Honor'' and ``The War of the Roses'' is lost in the pyrotechnic conflagration. It feels like we ought to still be chuckling, but it's too loud to hear any laughter.

Good thing Brad and Angelina look great and seem to be having the ball that audiences rightly should. Their visual appeal and edgy chemistry salvage a number of scenes that would otherwise simply collapse from the weight of their own preposterousness. Liman's ``Swingers'' discovery, Vince Vaughn, also provides more than his share of amusement in a handful of scenes as John's mama's boy partner in crime.

Simon Kinberg's script, which began life as his film-school thesis project, also contains a nice amount of zippy dialogue. But this is a man whose postgraduate writing has been on projects such as ``Elektra'' and ``Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.'' ``Mr. & Mrs. Smith'' is more entertaining than those. But, like a relationship you may want to think carefully about committing to, it puts you through an awful lot to get to the good stuff.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

MR. & MRS. SMITH - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, sex, language)

Starring: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn, Kerry Washington, Adam Brody.

Director: Doug Liman.

Running time: 2 hr.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Violent comedy about married assassins starts out fun and fairly sophisticated, descends into one-joke mayhem.

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Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play married assassins who discover they have been set up to kill one another in ``Mr. & Mrs. Smith,'' which drifts from character-based comedy into mayhem.