Movie Review - 'Salt'

Salt Starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and Chiwetel Ejiofor Directed by Phillip Noyce Rated PG-13

The recent Russian spy ring notwithstanding, the golden era of cloak and dagger stuff, what really inspired the mountains of great secret agent fiction over the past half century, was the Cold War. The CIA was formed after WWII to replace the OSS, and on the other side - back when it was convenient to think about the world in black and white terms - the KGB similarly rose from the ashes of Russian intelligence outfits in the early 1950s. Dating back further, you have spies like the notorious Cambridge Five, British communists who worked for years as double agents and possibly even triple agents. But in the past 20 years, it has been less relevant to use the Soviets (or now just the Russians) as villains in a spy caper. Very often, in fact, the CIA is parlayed as the evil force. But now, the Russians are back in the spotlight, thanks to both the real spy caper that's unfolded in the past month and Angelina Jolie's run-and-shoot affair called Salt. The title is Jolie's character's last name. Evelyn Salt works for the CIA and is interrogating a Russian defector when her world crashes down around her. The defector says that a Russian agent will kill that country's president while he's in New York attending the funeral of the US vice president. That Russian agent's name, he says, is Evelyn Salt. And here's where the running and shooting comes in. Clunky to this point, Salt picks up steam thanks to the action scenes, which aren't very well shot or edited, but the stunt work and some of Salt's ingenuity is great fun to watch. The film's script, by Kurt Wimmer, also keeps us on our toes by throwing a few question marks in that interrupt our understanding of the story, and let's just leave it at that. The reveals in the plot are placed very strategically and each one works, particularly if you don't try looking ahead in an effort to see what's next. That's the job of the movie, after all. Salt is trying to clear her name, but then why run? And why do some of the other things she engages in that could cast more doubt on her real motives? Salt is being pursued by her good friend in the agency (Liev Schreiber) and a counterintelligence expert (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who isn't going to wait for a trial to make up his mind about Evelyn's guilt or innocence. They're spectators to the action sequences, which give Jolie a chance to do what she does better than any other actress who can command a big paycheck. Her hand-to-hand combat is always good, she looks like she knows what she's doing when holding a weapon (or in one scene, building one out of office furniture), and she always sells the bumps very well. It's an important part of the development of Salt, which isn't typical. With the Bourne movies, a surefire comparison for a number of reasons, the action, from the moment Jason Bourne is dragged onto the boat at the beginning of the series, is understood. Salt adds a little more with each action scene so that you can see exactly what kind of bad-ass the US intelligence community is dealing with. Interspersed between those scenes are flashbacks to special memories of her husband that Salt cherishes. If something could be excised wholesale out of this movie, it's this subplot about the husband. Yes, it's Salt's motivator to go on the run for the first time, but the same effect could be accomplished without all the back story. Almost entirely the Angelina Jolie show, her gung ho performance is sideswiped by Phillip Noyce's awkward direction of the chase and fight scenes. With another actress in the lead role - or, perhaps, even Tom Cruise, who was linked to the project for a couple years as Edwin Salt before the film finally moved forward - Salt would just be a tired spy movie with a few too many plot twists. But that's not the impression we're left with. In fact, for a fairly standard movie for this genre with the exception of Jolie, the best news of all could be that the door is left open for sequels. There's a sense that Salt has a lot more to do and with a few minor adjustments, that could have real promise. And in a beautiful piece of Cold War symmetry, it would have to be called Salt II, don't you think?

Comments

[andrew]

im glad to see this got a good review. i was pretty excited after the trailer but didnt want this to be another basic spy/thriller/on-the-run movie.

[nocamae]

Nice call on the Salt 2 reference in politics. I hadn't even remembered tha until now and thought Salt as a title was kind of stupid.

With the Russian plot though, I actually like it a lot more, memorable,

[Shirish]

Can anyone explain how Evelyn Salt was trained by the russians as a child and was found in an accident. If she is trained by Russians then she was an implant in the CIA.

[Get The Big Picture]

Spoiler much?

[MRPigg]

There are many things that can't be explained and shouldn't be. The movie did a good job of setting you up to just accept things the way they are and swept the minor plot holes under a rug. But, Shirish, really? The teeny tiny unimportant car accident tidbit is what made you confused? Seriously?

SPOILERS ABOUND...

The MAJOR MAJOR plothole I could not get past was at the very end. Why didn't the (SPOILER!, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED) real bad guy at the end run away after the big fight scene? He thought they would still buy Salt as the patsy and he as the still CIA "hero?" Um, hello? Did anyone notice that there was a credible witness still alive, you know the guy who just happened to be THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
That was pretty cool how she offed him with her handcuffs. I'll give the movie that.

I heard they tweaked the ending a bit with reshoots. I wonder how confusing it was the first time around...

[Don Draper]

it was good not great serviceable, there were plot holes, I compare it to "Taken" in terms of just jump into the middle of the plot & running actually it is more akin to "Lethal Weapon II" Overall had a good time.

[Jessica Lovely]

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