CIA agent Evelyn Salt may not be what she seems in "Salt."

(Phillip Noyce, 2010)

July 28, 2010

by Joel Crary

Before “Salt,” I hadn’t seen an Angelina Jolie film in 10 years, not since “Gone in Sixty Seconds.” I’d hardly noticed. Her image is so present in the media that I sometimes register her movies as mere formalities in between domestic episodes. Yet I’d forgotten how devastatingly attractive she is on screen. During “Salt,” my attention kept going back to those immaculate lips of hers, coyly questioning a Russian spy, delicately smirking at his claims under a glaze of shiny pink lipstick that thoroughly complemented her dyed-blonde locks and exotic eyes. Wait, what was that about an assassination?

I’m inclined to observe that Jolie is simply too attractive to play a role like this believably, but the men who have been selected to play James Bond certainly haven’t been slouches in the looks department. No, it’s not that she’s too attractive. She’s a good actress besides, and it’s to Jolie’s credit that I was able to divert my attention away from that kisser and focus on the overripe trials and tribulations of Evelyn Salt, accused by the American government of being a Russian spy and pursued all the way to the White House. I get that Jolie is meant to serve as eye candy in a pretty ludicrous string of events, but she’s also tough as nails and committed, and that helps matters.

“Salt” hits the ground running. Initially, it’s exhilarating in the way it focuses on choreography at the expense of plausibility. (How does a lone woman, no matter how skillful in combat, single-handedly escape a building packed to the brim with operatives? A fire extinguisher? Cool.) There’s some great early dialogue shared between Salt and CIA cohort Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber). Their relationship never feels strained or tainted with that “we’re in an action movie” tone of not caring, and Schreiber is fantastic from top to bottom. As Jolie scales the side of an apartment building and pitches herself from a bridge to land hard on a semi, I was starting to think that “Salt” could meet the pedigree of “Casino Royale.”

Around the halfway point, things become achingly routine. The film concocts a straight-faced “Russians are going to nuke the West” plot as though Reagan were still in office. Nefarious Ruski Vassily Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) warns that Russian children have been trained since the Cold War to infiltrate American society as plants to carry out assassinations and launch attacks on the Middle East that will lead to the downfall of American civilization. Salt may or may not be one of those plants. Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, who has thus far made a career on middle-of-the-road action plots, can’t seem to make this material feel current in the slightest. Even the token white male president seems hopelessly out of date.

At least it’s well shot. Director Phillip Noyce, who helmed the Harrison Ford Jack Ryan films in addition to “Rabbit-Proof Fence” and the “Quiet American” remake, has a good sense of pacing and he and cinematographer Robert Elswit know their angles during chase sequences. The action spots are solid and it’s impressive to watch Jolie get that extra torque on her punches by jumping off of walls. While Monroe left dressing in drag to Lemmon and Curtis, Jolie spends a few sequences made up as a man, which seems about as Herculean a task for a makeup artist as can be.

It’s not that I’m opposed to the preposterousness of it all. Action movies are often given licence to be big, loud and stupid. But an action flick can be preposterous and still wield an intriguing plot or fascinating characters. While “Salt” isn’t a horrible action picture, I’m not convinced that it has the substance to be the female Bond or Bourne series it aspires to be. The back stories are thinly conceived and the plot advancements too convenient and twist focused. Who is Salt? We don’t entirely find out, and she never lends an answer because she’s too busy shooting up command centres.