By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Angelina Jolie knows how the public wants to see her. With guns. Or grenades. The woman definitely knows how to toss a grenade. Or break a neck. Swaggering. A smile on those heavy lips. Damage done, more to come.
Since she has a serious side, Jolie does make the somber drama here and there. But they don’t do much box office. People flock to the multiplex to see her in Wanted, or Mr. and Mrs. Smith. She plainly expects a similar reaction to Salt, a swiftly moving but ridiculously plotted action film. How much you like it will depend a great deal on how much you like to see stunts and Jolie kicking people around, and how much disbelief you can comfortably suspend.
As Salt begins, Evelyn Salt is being tortured in a North Korean prison. The Koreans insist she is a spy. She denies it. Soon enough, she is released in a spy swap; she is indeed a CIA agent. Jumping ahead two years, the movie finds Salt back in the United States, married and getting ready to take a desk job. Then a Russian defector appears, claiming that Salt is a deep-cover assassin. Her reaction goes swiftly from surprise to fear to determined self-defense; implicit is Salt’s determination not to go through what she did in North Korea.
As written by Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen), the rest of Salt consists of two things: physical movement, in the form of chase and fight scenes, and trickery, not only in what Salt does but in the lingering question of whom she is working for.
Director Phillip Noyce knows action, with credits including two of the Jack Ryan films, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. (He has also directed Jolie before, in the thriller The Bone Collector.) But the activity here is at times less than inspired; there is not much left to be done with car crashes. Still, it rises high twice, including in a climactic moment late in the film.
And Jolie is a true action star, the kind who makes you nod approvingly as she tears through sundry obstacles, even when her motives are questionable. Jolie may have to hand over her crown to Noomi Rapace, who plays Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo films; Rapace has an emotional ferocity that Jolie holds back. But Salt vs. Salander would be worth paying for.
Still, even big action movies have to offer a modicum of plausibility, and that’s where Salt loses me. It’s not just seeing Salt go barefoot for great distances without harm. (Die Hard should have put that cliche to rest.) Or the way that she can break through any set of barriers. That’s standard in action movies.
Still, two of the movie’s biggest plot twists are evident early on, and too often the story relies on its characters’ foolishness to keep going; a relatively simple act early in the movie would have stopped the plot cold. If you put the plot aside, what’s left is intermittently amusing — and Jolie is magnetic. But in the end, the movie is little more than a briskly efficient example of moviemaking, less art than competent factory-work.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com and on Facebook and on Twitter. He also does a weekly video chat for Ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
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Love this movie. Love Jolie even more!!!!!