Salt Wanted?

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2010)

I am a huge fan of Angelina Jolie. But only for her drama characters I guess. I watched Gia, Changeling, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and even Life or Something Like It. She doesn't have the most excellent body of work compared to the like of Kate WInslet or Cate Blanchett but her charisma in every role cannot be denied.
Angie is said the perfect cast for a female lead in a action movie. No contest to that. What she did in Wanted has sealed that title. But to my disappointment, Salt does not live up to the depth and edge Fox has shown us in Wanted.
I could not helped myself from comparing Angie's role in Salt and Wanted. Both had their histories told thru flashbacks but my dear Salt, the flashback is like high school kids narrated by their teacher in the time tunnel. i did cringe listening to the Russian guy's narration accompanied by the ever implausible old footages. I can even hear laughter from several audiences in the cinema.
Then we have the actions. I agreed with several reviews, the camera zoom every time Angie make her punches and kicks annoyed the hell of me. It made me dizzy and it made the actions partially visioned. lack of satisfaction there for an action-craver like me.
Again, we can see resemblances to Wanted from some of the actions. Salt crawling on the semi vs Fox crawling on train (the music score was sounded similar too!). Salt detonating the Russians by the river vs Wesley detonating the assassins head-q (using rats of course!). These deja vu doesn't help me liking Salt at all.
and yeah. 10 mins after the movie started, I knew that Liev's Ted Winter wud be the villain as well, but credit to him, the best scene for me was when Salt decapitate him using the (on-purpose?) lengthy chain.
Overall, my major problem was how Salt reminded me of Wanted but i'm still hoping for a knock-out sequel for Angie's sake. :)