Sergio Mims Reviews SALT

2010-07-23
By Sergio Mims

CAST: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel OlbrychskiWRITTEN BY: Kurt Wimmer 
DIRECTED BY: Phillip Noyce** TWO STARS 

There are people who will look at Salt as some kind of feminist fevered dream. A movie in which a female hero who takes it from men but dishes it out even harder. It wants very badly to be a fast paced Jason Bourne spy film with a ruthless and coldly efficient super spy front and center. Unfortunately the big problem which the film starring Angelina Jolie as Salt and directed by Aussie director Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, Rabbit Proof Fence, Catch A Fire) is that the film isn’t nearly as good as any of the Bourne movies and suffers mightily from trying too hard to copy its example. 

Equal parts Bourne, James Bond and a huge dose of MacGyver for good measure, Jolie plays Edina Salt, a high level intelligence analyst and occasional secret op for the CIA who we find at the beginning of the film being tortured in a North Korean prison after been arrested during a mission gone wrong. Months later after her release in a spy exchange, a Russian spy defector under interrogation accuses Salt of being a Russian sleeper agent inteht on carrying out a high level assassination. 

Naturally, Salt goes on the run to stop the assassination all the while brutally wiping out anyone who comes in her way.  

By now you can predict that there are plenty of surprise twists and turns and supposed shocking revelations, nothing is what it seems and nobody is who they claim to be. 

Credit SALT with at least one thing: it does move. It rushes along at a breathtaking, relentless pace as if the gas pedal is pushed down on the floor. But the ebb and flow, the push and release of tension that all good action thrillers have is sadly missing in Salt and as a result, despite all that frantic action, the film soon begins to become tedious. 

Though the film is a throwback to the old fashioned spy thrillers of the 60’s, in which the bad guys are the old fashioned communist Russians with plans for total world domination, the film is saddled with a ridiculous illogical plot.  

While most spy thrillers are expected to have some stretches of credibility, Salt stretches it beyond endurance until it becomes just silly.  

The film is further hurt by the character of Salt as played by a glum faced Jolie. Unlike Bourne, who is a person racked by inner torment and angst, Salt, is rather tedious, one dimensional, lethal killing machine with no depth. Bourne is clearly someone who is racked by guilt and self disgust when he is forced to take a life in self defense. Jolie’s Salt just smirks while looking as glamorous as possible when she blows away someone. 

But the major problem is the film working double time to convince us that a 95 pound weakling, anorexic looking Jolie is a hard core master spy and death machine on two legs.  

No matter how hard she tries she can’t shake off what she is, a beautiful movie star mom with a house full of kids. 

Where’s Pam Grier when you need her?