All intense relationships vaccilate between passion and doubt, love and distrust. Movies like this comfort us with the idea that this duality is both completely natural, and also inevitably experienced by the the sexiest, most glamorous among us.
The story of two assasins, simultaneously in love and at odds, is not new.
In Prizzi’s Honor, Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner are mafia assasins assigned to kill each other.
In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Pitt and Jolie are… well, I haven’t seen it, but it obviously fits in here somehow.
Spy Kidsuses this idea as exposition. The parents start out as spies assigned to kill each other, but they fall in love and have kids. But then, their exciting and difficult lives come back to haunt their children. Which reflects the fact that, while reproduction often seems like the end game, it only creates another universe of problems for a new human being, who isn’t so different from you, and whose problems aren’t so different from yours.
Leave a Reply