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Salt

(No longer in theaters)
  • Rating: PG-13 — for intense sequences of violence and action
  • Director: Phillip Noyce   Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alex Pettyfer, Gaius Charles
  • Running Time: 99 minutes
  • Reader Rating: Write a Review

Genre

Suspense/Thriller

Producer

Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Sunil Perkash

Distributor

Sony Pictures

Release Date

Jul 23, 2010

Release Notes

Nationwide

Official Website

Review

Salt is a senseless blast. As I think back, I have no clue why the guy at the beginning did the thing with the … or why Salt—that’s the name of the fugitive CIA agent played by Angelina Jolie—would need to … or why the villain could turn out to be… It’s impossible, impossible, to parse. But what Salt lacks in coherence it makes up in centrifugal force. You might not know why Salt is doing what she’s doing, but you know while you’re watching that Jolie knows. The actress’s certainty is diabolical.

It has to be, since she’s acting in a vacuum. After Salt is fingered as a Russian sleeper agent by a defector (Daniel Olbrychski) who then … never mind, it makes no sense … she has to escape from her erstwhile CIA colleagues. Much of Salt is Salt running away as Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor yell, “Salt! Stop! Salt!” She jumps off an overpass and onto a passing truck and then rolls over and kicks a motorcyclist off his bike and weaves on the bike between a jam-up of cars while the bullets zing past her. “Salt! Salt! Stop!” She’ll never stop. She’s on the hunt for her kidnapped German husband (August Diehl), an authority on spiders. Did he fall for her spidery grace, her cool disregard of gravity, her fanged smile? No, he fell for the pre-envenomed child below the surface. Now Salt will blow away anyone who stands between her and reclaiming that dewy innocence.

Director Phillip Noyce and writer Kurt Wimmer must have ticked off the heroes to be bested: Bond, Bourne, Bauer … Who’s missing? MacGyver! Watch Salt use household chemicals to turn a fire extinguisher into a rocket launcher. Watch her go where 007 would fear to tread: the women’s lav, where she tapes up a wound with a maxi pad. Salt strides down a hotel corridor, plucks an outfit off a rack of dry-cleaned clothes, opens the door to her suite, takes in the rooms—all in one fluid motion, without a wasted beat. That’s the movie: brisk, efficient, forward-ho even when the plot does loop-de-loops, fluid even when the action is smash-and-bash.

Noyce knows there’s nothing as potent as Jolie’s face, which can turn in an instant from open and tremulous to hard and mocking. We never stop trying to read it. This isn’t a high-camp performance, like her insouciant Lara Croft. Salt is drawn and stricken, emotionally off balance at her most physically poised. We don’t know what the hell she’s up to, but we root for her. After a shocking act of violence, James Newton Howard’s music goes from plaintive to syncopated, and a female choir begins to chant. It sounded to me like “Salt! Salt! Salt! Salt!” That’s what I wanted it to be, anyway. Because I wanted to sing along.

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