If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have indeed transferred their on-screen romance off-screen and transformed into a singular entity known (at least on "Jimmy Kimmel Live") as Brangelina, who could blame them?

After watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it would seem physically impossible for any human being with eyes and a pulse to resist falling in love with either of them or both of them at the same time.

These people are frighteningly beautiful individually and have insane amounts of combustible chemistry together. They could have sat there and read the phone book for an hour and 50 minutes and it would have looked hot especially in the warm, sensuous tones that envelop them in director Doug Liman's film.

But they don't just sit there. Far from it. They fire an arsenal of high-powered weapons (often at each other), fling a variety of knives and other sharp objects (a favorite activity of Jolie's in real-life, too) and blow stuff up real good.

Because Mr. and Mrs. Smith isn't just a romance, and it isn't just a comedy, though the banter in Simon Kinberg's script is sufficiently snappy. It is, at its core, a big, mindless action movie - a high-tech "The War of the Roses." So checking your brain at the multiplex door is a good idea, because it will prevent you from being distracted by just how flawed the film's premise is.

It will keep you from thinking thoughts like, if John and Jane Smith are truly super-duper secret assassins who are using each other as a cover to protect their identities, wouldn't each of them have thoroughly investigated the other before they got married and realized who their intended was? Or have they been blinded by the tequila, moonlight and explosions that overwhelmed them on the night they first hooked up in Bogota?

See, you can't let these thoughts creep into your head. You just gotta go with it, and everyone involved makes that easy to do, at least until the very end, when the movie culminates in a deafening, overlong (though elaborately choreographed) shoot-out inside an IKEA-type home decorating store. By then, the movie has worn out its welcome mat.

But Liman continues to show a knack for crisp pacing, even as his movies have gotten larger. Mr. and Mrs. Smith combines the infectious energy of his smaller, earlier films (Swingers, Go) with the complexity and scope of The Bourne Identity, his first foray into action flicks three years ago.

Here, John and Jane live an antiseptic life with a beautiful home, two cars and no sex. (The film begins and ends with the couple sitting side-by-side in cushy chairs, looking straight into the camera and answering questions during a therapy session. It's an amusing framing device but one that begs its own question: Since both husband and wife are spies and the marriage is a sham, which of them would have bothered suggesting counseling?)

Anyway, their relationship provides a clever twist on the conventions of sedate suburbia. She wears a frumpy apron to cook dinner, which is ready every night at 7; he comes home, pulls on a cardigan sweater and fixes himself a drink. They engage in distracted discourse over the new curtains she bought.

Sometimes, though, they sneak out at night under the guise of "work." Jane puts on a dominatrix get-up and heads into Manhattan to snap her latest victim's neck. John weasels his way into a back-room poker game and fires off a few effortless rounds to fulfill his mission.

It's only when both are assigned the same target (Adam Brody from "The O.C.," typically smart-mouthed as an up-and-coming spy himself) do they each realize whom they've been lying next to in bed every night. That epiphany sets up the film's subtlest, most suspenseful scene - a dinner that's more verbal ballet than quiet meal at home and forces each Smith to try and bump off the other.

John gets moral support from his co-worker and only real friend, played by Vince Vaughn, who's essentially doing the same high-strung, fast-talking thing he's done in nearly every film he's made since Liman's Swingers 10 years ago. It's familiar but effective. Jane's only friend (Kerry Washington) is a member of her all-female posse of amazonian secret agents - a nice touch, and one that's apropos for such a strong woman herself.

But to address the question, "Can you actually see Brad and Angelina falling in love on screen?"- the answer is: It's hard to tell amid all the noise and destruction. It's indisputable fun trying, though