Film Review : Salt

This high-octane spy thriller may be preposterous but it's also preposterously entertaining.

Salt, the propulsive new thriller from Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games), has been dubbed “Bourne with boobs,” but that label isn’t entirely accurate. In the role of Evelyn Salt, a CIA staffer hunted by her own agency after a Russian defector fingers her in a plot to murder Russia’s president, Angelina Jolie keeps her two most potent weapons holstered, hidden under pantsuits and trenchcoats and the various other components of a super-spy wardrobe that proudly emphasizes function over flash.
But flash is one thing Salt never lacks for. Its breathless cat-and-mouse game hits full-throttle almost from the outset, when a former KGB officer named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) stumbles into a CIA interrogation room and begins spilling details of a vast conspiracy. Back in the ‘70s, hardline elements of the Soviet regime launched an ambitious new front in the Cold War, flooding the western world with orphans trained to infiltrate the security complexes of their adopted homelands and wait patiently for the order to initiate a series of assassinations intended to trigger a devastating nuclear clash between the superpowers, from which the treacherous Reds would emerge triumphant.



Noyce keeps all the plates spinning marvelously, executing hair-raising action sequences, brutal fight scenes and walk-and-talk politics with equal confidence. He tosses in a little of the Greengrass-inspired shaky cam during some fight sequences, but unlike nearly everyone else who mimics that style, Noyce can actually pull it off. Jolie has brought on board her longtime stunt coordinator Simon Crane, and she's never looked more convincing as both a badass and a human being. Noyce's confidence in his leading lady (the two collaborated ten years ago on The Bone Collector), combined with Robert Elswit's fluid cinematography and Crane's fearless stunt choreography, invent Salt as a believably female Bourne or even Bond. At 35 Jolie is a little older than the typical female action hero, but that makes Salt all the more compelling as she repeatedly pulls off the impossible in her battle against the world.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Liev Schreiber are perfectly tense and well-used in their supporting roles, but Salt is Jolie's vehicle, and she owns every frame. Salt was famously rewritten to star a male protagonist, and it was Jolie's influence that kept the character from ever abusing her sex appeal, and allowed her to become increasingly dirty and disheveled as the movie reaches its action climax. We're a long way from Tomb Raider, and its encouraging to see Jolie use her immense starpower to create a female heroine who successfully exists apart from the male-dominated world she must struggle against. Salt the movie is refreshing in its old-school familiarity, but Salt the character is remarkable and new. It's a powerful combination that makes for some pretty ideal entertainment. It’s well-known that Jolie wasn’t the first choice to star in Salt, joining the project only after Tom Cruise dropped out, citing the story’s growing similarities to the Mission: Impossible films. But she’s more than just a capable replacement; she’s a welcome upgrade over Cruise, not least because she’s over a decade younger (and a few inches taller), than her predecessor. Should Brad Bird require a pinch-hitter for Ethan Hunt, he knows where to look.

Spy thrillers, by definition, trade in the preposterous, and the principal function of the blockbuster is to entertain. In that regard, Salt more than fulfills its charge. Noyce wisely keeps the story moving at pace that allows little time for asking uncomfortable questions or poking holes in the film’s frail plot. And he has an able partner in the infinitely versatile Jolie, who, having already exhibited formidable action-hero chops in Wanted and the Tomb Raider films, proves remarkably adept at the spy game as well.