Moviegoers who can ignore logic, suspend disbelief and hang on for the high-octane ride will enjoy this summer’s action thriller Salt. The film’s star, Angelina Jolie, continues to wow fans as a salty contender ready to go one step beyond to make her movies fun and full of adrenaline. We first see Evelyn Salt (Jolie) suffering a beating amid accusations of being a secret agent by a foreign government. She’s soon handed off in a prisoner switch and back home with her husband Mike (August Diehl, Inglourious Basterds).
Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Angelina Jolie
Later, while Evelyn is getting ready to head off to work one morning, it’s made clear she’s a CIA agent. At work she’s immediately assigned by her boss Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) to interview a possible Russian defector, Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski). Evelyn begins the interrogation with the aplomb of a homeless child asking the mother who threw her away the cold hard facts. She counters his weak explanations with solid demands.
The banter between the two takes a surprising turn when Orlov reveals a plot to kill the Russian president, who is coming to the U.S. for a funeral. Winter and counter-intelligence officer Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) suddenly stand alert as they listen in the next room. They are not expecting the next bit of news Orlov doles out, for he claims the assassin will be a Russian spy by the name of Evelyn Salt.
It takes only minutes for Peabody to dismiss Winter’s pretext that this can’t be true. He sounds the alarms and the chase is on. Evelyn manages to plow through doors at the agency like a shopper on Black Friday, leaving the building in shambles and downed agents strewn throughout. She heads for home to discover her husband is gone, and as she sees agents already below on the streets, grabs something that belongs to her arachnologist husband, an item she figures will come in handy at some point in her new mission.
That’s the basic plot of the film, which becomes one long action chase sequence with the audience trying to decipher who is really who and in what agency. While there are a few plot holes to sweep aside, this film is meant as an action film with a lead capable of handling the stunts and pacing while appearing believable. Rumored originally to be a role for Tom Cruise, Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal’s mind went into overdrive at a meeting with Jolie when she revealed, ‘I want to be Bond!’ Pascal found the script. Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen, Street Kings) reworked the entire Salt script to fit a female character and Phillip Noyce (Catch A Fire, Clear and Present Danger) was hired to direct.
Phillip Noyce & Angelina Jolie
Jolie appears quite cold and brooding as Salt and handles the agent’s arduous on-the-run skills quite well. It’s really no surprise. She awakened us to her longing to step out of the box in the Lara Croft films. And she stepped well into the “behind the gun and ready for a chase” scenarios in Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Wanted. Both Jolie and the filmmakers had little doubt she could play the tough scenes as written.
“Salt fights aggressively, in face-to-face combat,” Jolie said. “In some movies I’ve done, there’s been a temptation – because I’m female – to make the action nice” – and nice is not how a trained operative accused of being a sleeper mole for the enemy would fight.”
Jolie felt safe working with previous stunt coordinator Simon Crane (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.) Along with stunt double Eunice Huthart, Jolie did most of her own stunts including hanging off a tall building and riding on top of tractor-trailer trucks in chase scenes. And she rides a motorcycle through crazy traffic almost as good as Tom Cruise.
Schreiber (Defiance, The Manchurian Candidate), makes easy work of his character Winters, who is also a best friend to Evelyn but suddenly wonders who she really is. Ejiofor is equally engaging as an officer faced with split-minute decisions and having to trust his own instincts in order to protect his country.
As I mentioned, there are some moments in Salt that raise a few questions but overall Noyce does a good job maintaining a reality of events that other films have failed at, and the action is so fast there’s no time to question anything. Helping to keep many of the chaotic scenes convincing is Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood, The Burning Plain) who handled the chase scenes well and of course “lights” Jolie perfectly in every scene.
Jolie is an exceptional actress whose skills get overshadowed by the media about her personal life. I think she deserved awards for her heartfelt role in Changeling. Along with being a mindless action film offering no room for character development,and a rather clichéd ending that leaves the door wide open for a sequel, Salt proves Jolie has what it takes to stand in the spotlight as a prominent female action star.
Photo Credits: Andrew Schwartz / Columbia Pictures
