Our very own movie guru (movie-ru?) Johnny M reviews Angelina Jolie in Salt. (Let’s see Jennifer Aniston try to play a CIA Agent. Ha!) Just click Angelina’s lips for the full review!
Film: Salt Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl Written By: Kurt Wimmer Directed By: Phillip Noyce Genre: Action, thriller, chicks-kick-ass Rating: 7 out of 10 / B Reviewed By: Johnny M
It’s summer, and that means actions and thrills at the cinema, which most films convey by staging as many loud explosions per minute as they possibly can while the stoic, beefy male lead walks away unharmed (preferably in slo-mo). We’re also in the middle of a 3D craze, a painfully ubiquitous fad that seems designed more often than not as a cash grab by greedy studios. What a relief, then, that a summer film comes along that is judicious on the explosions, is filmed in glorious 2D, and has a strong female character at its center: Salt, or as it’s probably known in other parts of the world, Angelina Jolie Will Kick Everybody’s Asses.
(WARNING: POTENTIAL MILD SPOILERS AHEAD)
Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a veteran CIA officer with a fairly easy life. She’s respected at her job and has a loving husband (August Diehl) at home. All of this is upended when a Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) appears in her office and accuses Salt of being a Russian sleeper agent whose mission is to spark an international incident by killing Russia’s president on American soil. Desperate to clear her name and protect her husband, Salt must race against time to find out who’s trying to set her up while evading the feds, including her partner Ted (Liev Schreiber) who isn’t sure if Salt is innocent or not, and Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who definitely believes she’s the enemy.
The film comes off as a chimerical cross of Run Lola Run, Ultraviolet and a Tom Clancy film and with good reason: it was written by Ultraviolet‘s Kurt Wimmer and directed by Phillip Noyce, who gave us Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan in both Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. For certain, it’s got a distinctly retro vibe to it: the Russians haven’t been used as reliable bogeymen for years, although the Cold War revivalism isn’t as arbitrary as the trailers and reviews make it out to be. Noyce and Wimmer do a good job of balancing action film nostalgia with modern action film sensibilities: the Bourne shaky-cam shows up a number of times, and the film barrels down a logic-free plot track with confidence and an almost admirable lack of irony.
No matter how ridiculous the film gets (and it does get rather ridiculous by the end) it’s held together by Angelina Jolie, a task almost no other actor could do. Few female actors possess such kinetic potential as Jolie, except for perhaps Milla Jovovich or Michelle Yeoh, and even fewer actors (of any gender) hold so much raw, magnetic charisma. As in the similar whirly-gig guns-and-flip-kicks Wanted, Jolie is a hypnotic, magnetic presence that makes even the most implausible developments seem perfectly reasonable. Salt was originally a man named Edwin, written for Tom Cruise. When he turned it down, Salt got a sex change and Jolie took the role…and thank goodness for that. Jolie can express volumes of information with a single raised eyebrow or a nearly imperceptible purse of the lips while Tom Cruise expresses human emotion and motivation as if he read it out of a book poorly translated from the original German.
Salt as a woman is a much more dynamic force than Salt as a man, even if there’s almost no distinction made against her because of it. Evelyn Salt is a one-woman army, demolition crew, and strike force rolled into one that’s awesome to behold, similar again to the eponymous heroine in Wimmer’s Ultraviolet. Just like that character, her true motivations are not always clear or laid out. Wimmer and Noyce do an excellent job of withholding the information the audience needs to make up their minds. It’s never clear until the absolute final scenes what side Salt is on, and every time a piece of evidence sways you one way or the other, something else happens to make you reshuffle the information in your head. The flashbacks to Salt’s childhood and relationship with her husband are left intentionally vague, and the information is just enough to let you fill in a gap, forcing you to figure it out on your own.
Not everything is as sweet in the film, though. While it proceeds at a breakneck pace during the action scenes, there are a number of times when the film slows down, almost threatening to kill the built-up momentum (and the first act starts out very slow). In addition, while Jolie is brilliant, her supporting cast is a mixed bag. Pairing a force of nature like Jolie with the uncommonly handsome and soft-spoken Diehl is great, but Diehl resorts too much to a puppy dog gaze when he looks at the camera. Similarly, Liev Schreiber is playing the Liev Schrebier character, a task he learned well at the Duchovny School of Monochrome Acting. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a more active, more interesting focus for sure, but he isn’t given enough to do (and he never gets to show off the true extent of his skills like he did in Serenity). Finally, the film hinges on a final act reveal that you’ll either find perfectly acceptable in the hyperactive, comic book world of the film or that you’ll find completely ridiculous and arbitrary. Of course, you may think both of these things are true (and they probably are in equal measures). It all depends on how you surrender to the film’s internal logic.
And surrender is the proper option when it comes to Salt. The film never aims to be lofty or highbrow, and it never seeks to make any deep or salient points on modern times (although there are some there about the nature of conflict and identity). Instead, it’s a speeding amusement park ride of a movie, designed to make your pulse race and your knuckles whiten. The ending is a blatant set-up for a franchise, and here’s hoping that the next outing is even better. “Who is Salt?” asks the marketing posters. Even by the end of the film, you’re still not sure, but it’s a credit to everyone involved when you find yourself dying to find out.
Movie Review: Angelina Jolie Will Kick Your Ass
By Chance
July 26, 2010 at 2:25PM EDT
Our very own movie guru (movie-ru?) Johnny M reviews Angelina Jolie in Salt. (Let’s see Jennifer Aniston try to play a CIA Agent. Ha!) Just click Angelina’s lips for the full review!
Film: Salt
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl
Written By: Kurt Wimmer
Directed By: Phillip Noyce
Genre: Action, thriller, chicks-kick-ass
Rating: 7 out of 10 / B
Reviewed By: Johnny M
It’s summer, and that means actions and thrills at the cinema, which most films convey by staging as many loud explosions per minute as they possibly can while the stoic, beefy male lead walks away unharmed (preferably in slo-mo). We’re also in the middle of a 3D craze, a painfully ubiquitous fad that seems designed more often than not as a cash grab by greedy studios. What a relief, then, that a summer film comes along that is judicious on the explosions, is filmed in glorious 2D, and has a strong female character at its center: Salt, or as it’s probably known in other parts of the world, Angelina Jolie Will Kick Everybody’s Asses.
(WARNING: POTENTIAL MILD SPOILERS AHEAD)
Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a veteran CIA officer with a fairly easy life. She’s respected at her job and has a loving husband (August Diehl) at home. All of this is upended when a Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) appears in her office and accuses Salt of being a Russian sleeper agent whose mission is to spark an international incident by killing Russia’s president on American soil. Desperate to clear her name and protect her husband, Salt must race against time to find out who’s trying to set her up while evading the feds, including her partner Ted (Liev Schreiber) who isn’t sure if Salt is innocent or not, and Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who definitely believes she’s the enemy.
The film comes off as a chimerical cross of Run Lola Run, Ultraviolet and a Tom Clancy film and with good reason: it was written by Ultraviolet‘s Kurt Wimmer and directed by Phillip Noyce, who gave us Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan in both Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. For certain, it’s got a distinctly retro vibe to it: the Russians haven’t been used as reliable bogeymen for years, although the Cold War revivalism isn’t as arbitrary as the trailers and reviews make it out to be. Noyce and Wimmer do a good job of balancing action film nostalgia with modern action film sensibilities: the Bourne shaky-cam shows up a number of times, and the film barrels down a logic-free plot track with confidence and an almost admirable lack of irony.
No matter how ridiculous the film gets (and it does get rather ridiculous by the end) it’s held together by Angelina Jolie, a task almost no other actor could do. Few female actors possess such kinetic potential as Jolie, except for perhaps Milla Jovovich or Michelle Yeoh, and even fewer actors (of any gender) hold so much raw, magnetic charisma. As in the similar whirly-gig guns-and-flip-kicks Wanted, Jolie is a hypnotic, magnetic presence that makes even the most implausible developments seem perfectly reasonable. Salt was originally a man named Edwin, written for Tom Cruise. When he turned it down, Salt got a sex change and Jolie took the role…and thank goodness for that. Jolie can express volumes of information with a single raised eyebrow or a nearly imperceptible purse of the lips while Tom Cruise expresses human emotion and motivation as if he read it out of a book poorly translated from the original German.
Salt as a woman is a much more dynamic force than Salt as a man, even if there’s almost no distinction made against her because of it. Evelyn Salt is a one-woman army, demolition crew, and strike force rolled into one that’s awesome to behold, similar again to the eponymous heroine in Wimmer’s Ultraviolet. Just like that character, her true motivations are not always clear or laid out. Wimmer and Noyce do an excellent job of withholding the information the audience needs to make up their minds. It’s never clear until the absolute final scenes what side Salt is on, and every time a piece of evidence sways you one way or the other, something else happens to make you reshuffle the information in your head. The flashbacks to Salt’s childhood and relationship with her husband are left intentionally vague, and the information is just enough to let you fill in a gap, forcing you to figure it out on your own.
Not everything is as sweet in the film, though. While it proceeds at a breakneck pace during the action scenes, there are a number of times when the film slows down, almost threatening to kill the built-up momentum (and the first act starts out very slow). In addition, while Jolie is brilliant, her supporting cast is a mixed bag. Pairing a force of nature like Jolie with the uncommonly handsome and soft-spoken Diehl is great, but Diehl resorts too much to a puppy dog gaze when he looks at the camera. Similarly, Liev Schreiber is playing the Liev Schrebier character, a task he learned well at the Duchovny School of Monochrome Acting. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a more active, more interesting focus for sure, but he isn’t given enough to do (and he never gets to show off the true extent of his skills like he did in Serenity). Finally, the film hinges on a final act reveal that you’ll either find perfectly acceptable in the hyperactive, comic book world of the film or that you’ll find completely ridiculous and arbitrary. Of course, you may think both of these things are true (and they probably are in equal measures). It all depends on how you surrender to the film’s internal logic.
And surrender is the proper option when it comes to Salt. The film never aims to be lofty or highbrow, and it never seeks to make any deep or salient points on modern times (although there are some there about the nature of conflict and identity). Instead, it’s a speeding amusement park ride of a movie, designed to make your pulse race and your knuckles whiten. The ending is a blatant set-up for a franchise, and here’s hoping that the next outing is even better. “Who is Salt?” asks the marketing posters. Even by the end of the film, you’re still not sure, but it’s a credit to everyone involved when you find yourself dying to find out.
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