July 26, 2010 | Story by: Andrew Johnson | Categories: Arts, Film, News
Film Review for CaryCitizen by Andrew Johnson
Call me naïve, but after last week’s release of the tremendously inventive Inception, I was feeling optimistic. I was ready to believe that Hollywood really could make big-budget action films that had as much brains as they had bullets, and that these films could be produced consistently. This week’s release of Salt finds Angelina Jolie kicking butt and taking names – what could go wrong?
A lot, it turns out. Enough so that instead of being an over-the-top action romp, Salt is actually just the same mediocre fluff we’ve been getting at multiplexes for most of the year. It succeeds at delivering some fun action set pieces, but if you’re looking for memorable characters or a plot that’s halfway original, look somewhere else.
Salt stars Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent forced to go on the run when a Russian defector claims she’s a spy sent to kill the Russian president. This leaves fellow agents Winter and Peabody (Liev Schreiber and Chiweter Ejiofor, respectively, both of whom deserve meatier roles than this) frantically attempting to track her down and discover whether or not she’s on their side. It’s a campy B-movie plot with a nine-figure budget behind it, as if narrative flaws can be fixed by throwing money at them.
Jolie kicks, leaps, and kills her way through every obstacle in her path. It might be exciting if we hadn’t already seen her do the same thing in far more entertaining fare like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, or even Wanted. She’s a talented actress, and deserves to be offered roles that have more depth than “sexy assassin.” Thankfully, Salt decides to treat her less like Lara Croft and more like Ripley from Alien, emphasizing her determination and strength over sex appeal. If she happens to look good while kicking ass, that’s just an added bonus.
The most interesting thing about Salt is also its primary flaw. ”Who is Salt?” asked the film’s tagline and marketing. Is she a wrongfully accused CIA agent, or actually a deeply-entrenched Russian spy? The film strings the audience along a (mostly) successful series of twists precisely because we are unaware of her true motives. The answer to whether or not she’s a hero or a villain doesn’t come until the film’s last act.
Unfortunately, while the decision to keep Salt’s loyalties unknown leads to some intriguing guessing games, it also makes it difficult to get fully invested in her storyline. Forgive me if I’m reluctant to cheer for someone apparently intent on assassinating important political figures and potentially causing a nuclear holocaust. Morally ambiguous characters can often be interesting, but usually only when their motives are muddled. Salt’s motives are either purely good or purely evil, we just don’t know which, and it’s easy to feel apathetic as a result.
That isn’t to say Salt is completely void of enjoyable moments. Though the story is ludicrous and empty, the action works. Director Philip Noyce does everything he can to show us that Salt is virtually indestructible. She leaps from car to car in rush-hour traffic, sneaks past the security detail of high-profile officials, and makes homemade projectile weapons like there’s nothing to it. All of this is presented in reasonably clear fashion, without the need of excessive shaky-cam or confusing quick-cutting to liven things up. There’s also a refreshing amount of practical stunt work instead of CG gimmickry, so when things look tough you know they probably were.
At times, events are so ridiculous it seems as though Noyce might be attempting some form of tongue-in-cheek satire of the “wrongfully accused fugitive” sub-genre, at one point even randomly giving Salt her own theme song complete with background singers that croon her last name like a mantra. But as with many big-budget studio projects, Salt can’t figure out what it’s doing. To be entirely straight-faced about such an absurd story would be unoriginal, but to be completely satirical might alienate some viewers, so it commits to neither and is worse for it. The film doesn’t even try to hide that its ideas are stolen – even going as far as to include an obvious Mission: Impossible homage in the final act – it just seems to want to slide by on creative plot twists and kinetic action scenes. The former are only mildly surprising, and the latter are only worth seeing for their practical stunt work.
Tom Cruise turned down the title role (originally named Edwin Salt) because he felt the character was too similar to that of Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series. He’s right. The film is a mishmash of ideas from other far better films, and rather than attempting to do something new with them, it tries to slide by on its overarching mystery: the true identity of Evelyn Salt. Cruise instead went on to do Knight and Day, a collage of clichés that at least attempts to add a well-constructed layer of satire. The action may be thrilling, but by the time the credits of Salts start to roll, you might be wishing Jolie had taken a hint and done the same.
Andrew Johnson is the host of MovieChatter, a weekly film discussion podcast headquartered in North Carolina. He also occasionally blogs about film at The Kuleshov Effect. Of all the opinions out there about the current state of cinema, he swears that his are the right ones.
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