Salt (***½)
Directed by: Phillip Noyce
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Live Schreiber, Chewitel Ejiofor, Daniel
Olbrychski, August Diehl
Seen: September 4th and 22nd 2010
***½
Out of ****
From the trailer to the actual movie Salt is one of the rare ones –
you only think they give away too much in the advertising, but what is given is
misleading and taken out of context of the story the movie dazzles you with.
Salt is a very entertaining roller-coaster ride of an action movie, and
Angelina Jolie adds heaps to the movie by way of swift brutality and blistering
sensuality.
Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is a law-enforcement officer (the movie tells for
who soon enough, but the trailer doesn’t, so neither will I), who is pulled
into the interrogation of a Russian FSB agent, Vassily Orlov (Olbrychski). He tells
of an elaborate Russian intelligence scheme where Russians are inserted into
American society as sleeper agents who can wait decades for their missions to
be realised. He then accuses Evelyn Salt of being one of these agents, who will
kill the American president soon enough.
Salt proceeds to escape the building before the necessary steps can be
taken to contain her, and she goes on the run while trying to contact her
husband Mike Krause (Diehl), a German whom she has fallen in love with despite
the fact that we are fleetingly shown that he was one of her missions. Salt
goes through certain appearance changes and continues to wreak havoc with
Secret Service and CIA protection plans at the funeral of the American
vice-president before she gets captured only to escape again. The stakes keeps
rising and Salt is in a desperate race to either prove her innocence or become
what she is accused of, as the viewer you are never really sure – and that’s
where the movie’s power is centred – you are continually kept guessing while
given ample awesomely orchestrated action sequences. Even in it’s conclusion
the viewer can never be quite certain how things will end up, and only as the
movie ends and you feel the strangest Bourne-type déjà vu do you see the
intriguing direction this franchise is hurtling towards.
Angelina Jolie brings equal amounts of grunt and finesse to the femme
fatale lead and the filmmakers’ choice to cast her instead of a male lead (Tom
Cruise was originally slated to be Salt) was definitely inspired. Salt is a high-octane
action movie that, while presenting us with a whole story which is aptly
concluded, leaves you gasping for more, for the inevitable next episode. If you
enjoyed the Bourne movies and the Daniel Craig Bond movies, then Salt will fall
right in your ambit, and what’s more, it will definitely surprise you in it’s authenticity
– we see minimal special effects gimmickry here as the action is real, and it
is entertaining. Salt is the beginning of something big – and I can’t wait for
more.
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