Salt

[cinemabon]

"Salt" is the latest offering of director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Saint, etc) and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (writer/director of Ultraviolet, etc) as an action thriller to showcase, mostly, the talent of Angelina Jolie. She has become the quintessential female action star with film roles like Laura Croft to give her street cred. She emotes well, hits her marks and generally comes across with great fervency. I love to watch her on the screen. She has great screen presence. This film suits her style. Those who love the spy/action/thriller will enjoy the film. That said...

Having read most of the reviews after the fact, I'm beginning to wonder if these film critics have left their film memory on hold. The plot is a terrible rehash of films that have gone before. At this point, I must put up a SPOILER ALERT, because I am about to reveal an important part of the plot and I do not wish to bring upon those who wish to see this film disappointment.

If you saw "The Manchurian Candidate" or "No Way Out" you know the plot of this movie, which is sad in a way...because of its predictability, I could not enjoy the movie. I not only saw the ending coming, but saw it from miles away. Quell let down! Even when I glanced down at my watch and saw Ms. Jolie in her last ride, I knew they had planned for a sequel. So be it, Jedi. However, the idea is not new and that leads me to my final word on this film... why can't Hollywood find any good plots any longer? All four previews in front of this film were "action" movies with all star casts shooting or chasing their way from scene to scene. I mean enough!

Recommended for those who love action and shoot em ups, but the plot is old, rehashed, and abused. Ms. Jolie is a magnificent talent wasted on this project... but I wish her well and good luck with "SALT II" the treaty with Russia.

[Chris Knipp]

I'll let you know what I think. It has done pretty well in reviews as you hint (Metacritic 78).

[cinemabon]

I'm set to fly out of town for a little summer R&R... after Saturday I'll be incommunicado (and can't refudiate that!) so if you plan to write a review or see the film this weekend, I may not respond until later. Have a great August everyone... July's been murder here. We're approaching our 50th day with temps over 90, ugh! Hot enough to make your paint run off the canvas. So long art lovers...

[Chris Knipp]

Phillip Noyce: Salt (2010)

http://a.imageshack.us/img202/3940/2009salt001.jpg

Angelina Jolie superstar

Review by Chris Knipp

You have great spy stories, like those of John Le Carré. You have great spy action adventures, like the Bourne stories. And then you have action movies with superficial espionage plots that are merely excuses for the stars to go through their paces, like Phillip Noyce's Salt, with a screenplay written by Kurt Wimmer and enjoyably bombastic music by James Newton Howard. The star is Angelina Jolie, instead of Tom Cruise, who was originally considered. This change makes a big difference. It's more interesting to see an action superstar who's a woman, and Angelina Jolie has proven to be the best. Whether it's truly a breakthrough for a female to do this kind of role is debatable, but in some sense certainly it's a further step toward sexual equality, and Jolie is an A-lister to equal any male star.

Working with Kurt Wimmer's writing, Salt delivers a warmed-over Cold War tale of Russian moles, the CIA, and plots against the USA -- stuff too unsophisticated for Bourne and too passé for Le Carré, but Noyce, a very good director as well as a skillful storyteller, doesn't insult our intelligence with it. Angelina's action chops are such that she can take and deliver the same violence as any man and not seem pushed or abused.

As with so many films that favor movement over narrative, flashbacks fill in an (intentionally) confusing and checkered background for Evelyn Salt (Jolie), whom we see in an opening sequence being beaten and tortured by the North Koreans and then sprung by a soulful Teutonic fellow called Mike Krause (August Diehl of A Woman in Berlin and Inglourious Basterds). Two years later they're happily married in Washington and he's an arachnologist and she's a CIA agent, her closest associate seemingly being fellow operative Ted Winter (a solid Liev Schreiber).

The first big surprise (and passage of lightening exposition) comes when Salt debriefs an unexpected Russian defector, Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski). Orlov tells Salt (and a squad of cohorts behind one-way glass) about a secret network of Russian spies trained in childhood to be planted as sleepers in the US, and then he fingers Salt as one of them. Salt denies this verbally, but appears to confirm it in action by embarking on a whirlwind escape through DC, climbing around outside her apartment building in her bare feet, defying security cameras, leaping from one speeding semi- to another and then another on the Beltway, and jumping around inside an elevator shaft, as well as wiping out anybody in any location who gets in her way. She escapes from a trapped situation in the CIA building by improvising some kind of rocket launcher thing from table legs and fire extinguishers, hiding what she's up to by taking off her panties and throwing them over the security camera. (What would Tom Cruise have done?) Ted and his associate Peabody (the excellent but this time wasted Chiwetel Ejiofor) remain close on her tail but one step behind. From here on more or less to film's end the running and the violence never stop, with major plot twists every twenty minutes or so.

What follows is saved from being merely one long chase sequence by keeping us guessing about where Salt's loyalties really lie. Things take on a Bourne-like cast as it begins to seem she doesn't know the answer to that question herself. Salt is in New York, still narrowly evading the CIA, where the Russian president (Olek Krupa) is to give a funeral eulogy in a church. Orlov has said the team of moles have been assigned to assassinate him. What will she do? You'll have to see the movie to find out.

Noyce proved his action skills with Tom Clancy adaptations, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, dated Nineties material. The Australian director showed more class with The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence, fine politically-charged tales shot by the brilliant Christopher Doyle. Here Noyce maintains a break-neck pace (no room to breathe) that almost hides the lack of plausibility in the plot, but the material seems decades old. A final surprise identity revelation and a doomsday scenario deep under the White House are more opportunities for Angelina Jolie to show her invincibility as an action heroine, but original narrative and rounded character portrayal are elements never allowed to come in out of the cold. Luckily the constant battles are filmed with sparkle and clarity and without too much reliace on CGI trickery. Some of the old-school aspects pay off, even if the storyline seems past its expiration date. But while we give the benefit of the doubt to the physical exploits, some details are patently absurd. For instance when Salt escapes from DC to NYC, she disguises herself by shifting from neutral-toned clothes to all-black outfits and dyes her long hair shiny black. Some disguise. She stands out more than ever and looks more than ever the bee-sting-lipped sculpted-cheekboned superstar. Did the filmmakers think they were dealing with Bourne's Franke Potente? They may have forgotten that Potente was virtually unknown, and hence easier to disguise with some hair dye -- and a cut. Jolie's tresses remain long and flowing.

Nonetheless Angelina, who demonstrated her dynamic physicality in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Wanted, and the Tomb Raider movies, continues to carry off this kind of invincible female ball-buster role with cool panache. Only Uma Thurman has done as well. But to think of Uma in Tarantino's Kill Bill series (of which a third installment is on the way) is to realize that her function as the Pulp Fiction wunderkind's muse puts her on an entirely different plane. Ms. Jolie is tough, fearless, beautiful, and scary, but she has never had the likes of Tarantino to write parts for her. She merely has taken workmanlike material and delivered it with boldness and dash, and she does that again here in this boilerplate but nonetheless rousing femme fatale blockbuster.

[tabuno]

The beginning sequences in New York didn't seem consistent with Jolie's spy abilities later in the movie, especially in how she manages to get out of her secure cell in the first place. The early chase scenes seem a bit repetitive though different and not quite sufficiently within the realm of believable even for a movie script. Angelina also breaks too much in her emotions in a pivotal moment in the movie which she is confronted with her mentor. And the secure room for the President is also a scene where Angelina failing to make it inside before the fireworks also seemed to not be the best chose having to bat her pretty eyes to get inside. Finally the ending sequence of unnecessarily explanatory and revealing in its delivery, a departure of much of the rest of the movie spoling the finishing touches to this movie.

Angelina's make up artists like Knipp pointed out really didn't do a great job the first time around, perhaps they need to go to spy school.

Overall enjoyed the movie, but it could have been better and classier.

[Chris Knipp]

I concur with your conclusion, but it's hard to comment on your other statements. I'm not sure what you mean by the early sequence exactly--where does that end? As for plausibility, I don't think anything is particularly plausible, so it's pointless to make a list.

[tabuno]

Angelina's escape sequence from the CIA building was uncertain, un-BOURNE-like and didn't seem to portray a capable CIA agent. The first problem I had with the movie was when the was a quick edit to her character's being free in the CIA building after being secured in a holding room without revealing how she escaped. I've always found such lazy editing to some script device because the writer didn't know how to explain the character's actions or the director just didn't want to take the time or budget to reveal how such an activity occurred. Her character then also appeared very confused, lost in her own building which I assumed a trained CIA agent in her own building would have intimate knowledge of very part of the building, especially where the cameras were and would have disabled them immediately or could evade them through hidden spots in camera's sweep. Also, I would have assumed the CIA would have had infrared heat sensors to determine the existence of bodies more than just visual confirmation. Angelina's character just seemed so unsettled and a step behind her pursurer's in the beginning. Later in the movie, her actions seemed to become more professional, certain, poised, and deliberate.

[Chris Knipp]

What you say makes sense. But also there is simply a lot that is implausible throughout, and a lot that is not explained at all, perhaps Salt's movements are without as many "lazy edits" later on, as you say. However, the whole operation in the church is impossible to understand. How did it get set up? There are a lot of jumps, if you ask me. I'm sure it's not due to lack of money; SALT's production per the LA Times was $120 million, which should have been enough. I think it's because it's all set forth in a great hurry. That's the approach.