Salt (2010)
DIRECTOR: Phillip Noyce
CAST:
Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Andre Braugher, Olek Krupa
REVIEW:
Equal parts The Bourne Identity and The Manchurian Candidate, Salt is a dizzyingly-paced whiz-bang action thriller that contains enough spectacular stunts to dazzle in the immediate present, and enough twists and turns to avoid making the viewer feel like checking their brain at the door is a prerequisite to their enjoyment. In fact, Salt requires a level of the viewer’s attention.
Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is one of the CIA’s best and brightest agents, and has sacrificed almost everything to serve her country. But when the CIA brings in a Russian defector named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) for interrogation, he quickly turns her world upside down by fingering her as a member of a sleeper cell on a secret mission to assassinate visiting Russian President Matyveyev (Olek Krupa). Evelyn’s partner Ted Winters (Liev Schreiber) believes her when she insists her innocence, but Evelyn then goes on the run, which proves her guilt in the eyes of her pursuer, Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor). But what is really motivating Evelyn’s flight? Is she trying to find evidence to clear her name, or fulfill her mission? And as the pursuit goes on, the assassination plot might turn out to be aiming even higher than Orlov has claimed.
The most intriguing aspect of Salt is the million dollar question hanging over the central character. Is Evelyn a framed agent on a singlehanded mission to prove her innocence, or is she exactly what Orlov says she is? The movie employs some twisty-turny misdirection that will likely have viewers looking at our ‘heroine’ differently in the beginning, midsection, and conclusion. Those who like things cut-and-dried might get frustrated by the way the movie won’t let them be sure whether they should be rooting for Evelyn or against her. Along the way, Phillip Noyce directs the action scenes with flair, and avoids the Paul Greengrass method of violently shaking the camera in every direction to create blurs of chaotic fight sequences. For the most part, the action in Salt is not only frequent, it’s coherent. And like the Bourne films, the pace moves at a fast-and-furious pace, pausing for breath as seldom as its lead character. The movie is also about as violent as it can be while retaining the PG-13 rating, including a high body count and moments of bone-breaking combat and torture. When it comes to dispatching enemies, Evelyn is just as lethally efficient as Jason Bourne, even if the rating holds her just a hair back from the sheer brutality Liam Neeson got to unleash in Taken.
Salt was originally set to star Tom Cruise. His replacement with Angelina Jolie was probably the best thing for the movie. Female action heroines are rare enough that it automatically makes the movie a little less generic, and audiences would automatically look to clean-cut action hero Cruise as a cut-and-dried good guy. Jolie has a more ambiguous, dangerous, femme fatale side to her that makes us believe she could plausibly be either a righteous heroine or a lethal murderess, and she throws herself into the over-the-top stunts and fight scenes with a straight face that almost convinces us she’s actually doing this, even when some of her more extreme stunts push our suspension of disbelief about someone actually surviving this (the semi jump early on). There’s nothing here that really requires deep dramatic acting from Jolie, but she’s no stranger to action (Wanted, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Tomb Raider), and seems right at home. No one else gets much to do, certainly nothing that’s a stretch. Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor do a lot of running around looking intense as stock character types, with Schreiber as the conflicted partner who wants to believe Evelyn is innocent, and Ejiofor as the standard-issue Fugitive-style dogged cop convinced his quarry is guilty.
Salt‘s 95-minute running time and emphasis on spectacular action over intrigue doesn’t leave the breathing room to develop the underlying diabolically Machiavellian premise to its full potential, but there is a touch of The Manchurian Candidate in the concept of highly-placed sleeper cells (the casting of Liev Schreiber gives another, probably coincidental connection). Its repeat viewing factor is also questionable, considering by far the most compelling aspect is not the action, but the questions surrounding Evelyn, which of course are answered after one viewing. Still, the movie does an admirably tricky job of making us believe Evelyn is both innocent and guilty at different points of the film, with the climax providing another surprise twist. The movie tries to make Evelyn’s relationship with her German-born husband Michael (August Diehl) an emotional anchor, but it’s sketched out in too fleeting and perfunctory a way to make us care as much as we’re supposed to, and the ending is somewhat unsatisfying and feels like it should come with a ‘to be continued’ footer, like we’ve just watched the pilot of a television series. Still, Salt is certainly never boring, and keeps the audience guessing enough to hold its rapt attention at least for one viewing, even if it doesn’t necessarily make you eager to give it another spin.
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