SALT

The role of Edwin Salt, super spy, was originally given to Tom Cruise, before he decided that the part was too similar to his role in the Mission Impossible series. Instead, Cruise opted to make Knight and Day, an awful lowest common denominator action flick infested with lame CGI and smug dialogue. Knight and Day is different from Mission Impossible in one important way – it was completely void of any intelligent spark. But I digress; I’m only seeking to make the point: Salt is smarter than most popcorn fair. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have moments of stupidity, importantly, however, it seems to be having fun even when the plot becomes seriously convoluted and forced.

So, Edwin became an Evelyn and Cruise became Jolie. Through a series of action flicks, comprising the Tomb Raider movies, Mr and Mrs Smith and Wanted, Jolie has positioned herself as a bankable action star. Unfortunately, none of the above movies are much good, despite her credible performances. She throws herself into these roles with giddy aplomb and as a result is capable of crafting a believable heroine at odds with her more vulnerable roles in A Mighty Heart or Changeling. Promotional material for Salt also suggests that Angelina does a great deal of her own stunts, but I wonder about the extent to which this is true. Jolie is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars and as a result she’s too valuable to risk.

This film begins really strong. CIA agent Evelyn Salt is imprisoned in North Korea where she is brutally tortured as her captors seek to discover her true identity. But, this girl is damn good at maintaining a lie. Her future husband, an arachnologist with access to North Korea (yes, really and with a job like that you know it’s going to be relevant at some point later in the film) discovers Salt’s location and forces the CIA into action. Two years later, Salt has been freed, is happily married and content in her job as a CIA agent. This is until a routine interrogation with a Russian defector, Orlov, who reveals details regarding ‘Day X’. Orlov tells Salt about a group of Russians born agents, trained from birth to spring into action on Day X and bring about the destruction of the United States. These agents would have extensive plastic surgery to appear American, would be trained to speak and act American and would earn high profile jobs in the US government, so when the time came they would be in a position to cause a great deal of damage. The kicker is this: Orlov claims, in front of everybody watching, that Salt is one of the Day X agents.

The identity of Salt is the driving force of the film – who is she and is she a force for good or evil? Fearing for her husband’s life she evades the CIA and goes rogue. Her buddy in the CIA, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) seeks to catch Salt so that they can establish the truth together and clear her name (but if you’ve seen a Liev Schreiber performance before, it’s quite clear what’s going to happen and where his real motivations lie). Then there’s Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor, also in a role he’s done many times before) who chases Salt relentlessly, believing that she represents a genuine threat to the United States. It’s disappointing that no time is given to developing Peabody’s character, who is so flat and uninteresting that he might as well not exist. This disappointment is magnified because we know Ejiofor is an extremely talented actor who can give a dignity to these kinds of roles if given a chance (as he did as ‘The Operative’ in Josh Whedon’s Serenity).

So there are a couple of missed opportunities. Jolie, on the other hand makes the most of her role. There’s a great sequence early on in the film as she escapes the CIA by jumping from moving to truck to moving truck. Moment's like this get the blood pumping and aid the progression of the film. The action manages to remain compulsive even as the plot falls apart towards the end of the film. By keeping Salt’s identity secret from the audience until near the end of the film, it is impossible to keep track of her motivations and her actions become more and more nonsensical. It’s also fun to note that despite living in America all their lives and having been trained from birth to speak and act American, all the Day X agents, speak in perfect Russian accents when they come out of hiding. Yes, the film is smarter than most popcorn fair, but it can also be pretty stupid too. Its primary plot mechanism is designed to keep the audience guessing at all times. It works too, but by sticking with it for so long a number of gaping plot holes form. By the end of the film we have reached levels of absurdity approaching those present during Knight and Day. We do however, have the preceding 75 minutes which are entertaining, satisfying and driven by a convincing lead performance.