subject: Salt Film Review Online [print this page] This could have been just another of those Hollywood cookie-cutter chase movies where an innocent man (or in this case, woman) is framed for something they didnt do, and spends the movie searching for the real criminals at the same time avoiding capture by the authorities. This was done masterfully years ago in The Fugitive. Its also been done dreadfully in many sad examples.
But Salt, the new movie by Phillip Noyce, the director of Patriot Games and "Clear and Present Danger." can be compared favorably to The Fugitive. And the reason is due to the muscular, gritty and explosive performance of Angelina Jolie. Where Harrison Ford was instrumental in the success of the before-mentioned three films, Jolie is crucial to the feel of Salt.
Jolie plays CIA operative Evelyn Salt, one of the agencys top super-spies. On the night of her wedding anniversary Salt is contacted by the Agency. A recently defected Russian spy is thought to have information crucial to National Security. Since Salt is their best interrogator, they summon her in to do the interrogation.
During the interrogation the Russian defector lays out a still active, decades-long Soviet plan to plant sleeper agents inside the United States. Starting in 1975, Russian agents began entering the United States and immediately started blending into the population. These agents, indoctrinated since childhood, are ready and waiting for missions from Russia.
One such mission, according to the defector, has just been issued. The Russian President has just entered the United States to visit with the American President. One of the sleepers is to kill the visiting Russian President and the host American President. In the middle of this certain chaos a nuclear device, hidden somewhere in the Middle East, will be detonated in such a way as to implicate the U.S. The idea is to destroy the United States while Russia regains power.
Salt, her CIA bosses and coworkers are astonished to hear of this plan. Salt then presses the defector for the name of the mole. After a few lame attempts at resistance he finally answers Evelyn Salt.
As her CIA colleagues in the room look at each other and then at her, the next sequence lets the viewer know what to expect from the rest of the movie. Evelyn Salt immediately transforms from super-spy to mega-super-spy. In a rapid succession of physical feats that would make Jack Bauer envious, she escapes from the room, makes her way out of the CIA building, jumps off an overpass and onto a moving 18-wheeler, then onto a tanker truck, then onto another semi before landing on the windshield of a cab, stealing a motorcycle and speeding away.
Of course her quick exit just makes her CIA colleagues sure that she is a mole. That is all except her associate and good friend Ted Winters (played by Liev Schreiber), who loves her and desperately wants to believe she's innocent. The head counterintelligence agent on the case (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) immediately mistrusts her and sends out everyone he has to track her down dead or alive.
The rest of the movie is Salt trying to find out what is going on, who is doing this to her, and to clear her good name. In a subplot that turns out to be more important as the film goes on, Salts husband is kidnapped. Now she must also search for her husband.
As alluded to earlier, no actress working today is as convincing an action star as Jolie, and she does tear it up here; the fight scenes are graphic and intense with almost no CGI. You can tell that Jolie is performing stunts that could result in serious injury or even death if she wasnt well trained. Salt commits many acts of violence over a short time some of them very questionable, many of them deadly, in her attempt to evade capture. Really, her character shares many traits with Jack Bauer.
The movie does a good job of concealing whether or not Salt is actually a good spy or a bad spy. Just when you think you have it nailed down something happens to make you reevaluate.
If you want to see a very entertaining movie that will keep you guessing to the very end, go see Salt.
by: Rex Hunter
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