I give any movie under the sun a chance. I will always look for some redeeming features or some merit from any cinematic experience. But when the only one that strikes you after 100 minutes of Salt is that Angelina Jolie looks great once she dyes her hair black, you know you're in trouble. This review will contain spoilers, but there's no other way to point out the ridiculousness of this movie, without talking about plot points.
The film concerns Evelyn Salt, played as well as could be expected by Angelina Jolie. She is a CIA agent who is happily on her way back to her husband for their anniversary when a man turns himself in, claiming to know secrets about Russian moles within the U.S, government agencies. She gives him five minutes, where he details a long term plan by the Russians 30 years ago to kidnap babies, and train them from a young age to be secret agents. They then send them to America to infiltrate the CIA, NATO, Secret Service, and whatever other agencies are linked to the plot. Now at this point, I must mention that I quite enjoyed this idea, and I like the idea of a man with such deep beliefs, that he could set up a covert agency like this. Salt is about to leave the room when the man reveals that a Russian mole is going to kill the Russian president, and that the name of the mole is Evelyn Salt.
So rather than take the word of a CIA agent who was tortured in Korea and never gave anyone up, and also has a clean record of service, they take this defector at his word and detain her. No due process, no further interrogation of the suspect. Nope, they've got her bang to rights. Hmm.....
Salt thinks her husband might be in danger, and decides to go on the run to find him and clear her name. But not before an overlong, repetitious chase sequence where the might of two agencies who defend their country on a day to day basis, cannot catch one woman. Well I guess we know she's serious. But crucially, no-one dies trying to stop her. That's important for later.
So another little tidbit gets dropped at this point, that her husband just happens to study spiders. Bit of a wacky occupation for a spy to be holed up with, but aha! This is also important for later.
So she's wounded from the chase and needs to stop the bleeding. So she goes to a club but has no money to get a maxi-pad from their bathroom, so she kicks the machine off the wall. I guess this is to show how desperate she is, and how she has nowhere to turn. Oh wait a minute, in the very next scene she is in New York, has a fake credit card, and a stash of money, guns and provisions, including spider venom she extracted from one of her husband's deadly spiders that he just keeps around the house. I wonder what she'll use that for? You never see her put it to use so when it is 'revealed' what she has done with it, there is zero surprise.
So, true to form, the very next sequence has Salt conforming to the story that she's a mole, a kick ass agent and a patriot, so she goes through with the plan to assassinate the Russian president. On the way to getting there, she takes out at least 10 or 11 secret service agents, yet again she does not mortally wound anyone, do you see a pattern establishing here? So she shoots the president, but it is done off camera. And when his body is found there us no blood and no-one pronounces him dead, just that he has 'no pulse'. Do you think she might have used the spider venom? Salt is arrested and everyone is now convinced of her guilt, but we're only halfway through the film and no-one has died.
So, she escapes from custody again (those secret service agents are really incompetent aren't they? Guess they were just hiring that day) and reunites with the man who outed her as a sleeper. They kill her husband, and force her to watch to prove her loyalty. So she lashes out and kills everyone in the boat. Think she is who the CIA think? I mean, she hasn't killed anyone so far, and then suddenly she is a killing machine?
I could go on and on, but the biggest 'revelation' which grates, is when they reveal who the real mole is. Like it wasn't obvious the whole way through, but then they try to explain why they outed Salt in the CIA building and apparently it was a back up in case anything went wrong, then she would take the fall. So let me get this straight, a man has been training kids and planning this 'Day X' for thirty years, has planned it down to the most meticulous of details, but needs a loud, unpredictable, highly trained patsy in case things go wrong? Ridiculous!
This may very well be the worst film I've seen since Eagle Eye. What they both have in common is that they try to play it straight, to try and give some sort of weight that this could actually happen, and then pepper it with characters who make ridiculous decisions and stupid plot twists that make no sense. If this were something like Mr and Mrs Smith, or say, True Lies, it could try to play it tongue in cheek and wink at the audience, but there is zero humour in this.
Oh and one last thing, if you're going to make a film, give it a definitive ending. Make it a self contained story. The last few minutes of this set up a sequel to such ridiculous proportions that you'll think the last reel is missing. Batman Begins showed how to tease audiences with the Joker Card ending, but still had a self contained story. The Bourne Identity had a self contained ending where Bourne meets up with Marie in the bike hire shop but still leaves the world open to a sequel.
Rant over for now, but don't be surprised if there's a follow up and also a tearing apart of Eagle Eye......
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