Outrageous but entertaining.

Rating: Null/10 (31 July 2010)

My Rating: *** out of 4.
Ridiculous. Implausible. Derivative. Way over-the-top. I'd be surprised if it wasn't! No one really goes to a movie like SALT expecting it would be moving or intelligent. They expect a good time, and in just the right time to beat the heat. SALT is a gloriously goofy but ridiculously enjoyable thriller. Not a great comic thriller like a James Bond movie or a serious chase thriller like any of the Bourne pictures, but it's fun all the same even if, with all the silliness that ensues, it could have at least had characters that would have cracked a smile just a little bit.
Still, what it lacks in humorous and charismatic characters worthy of a James Bond, it more than makes up for it with the panache it gives to its action sequences. We've seen enough chases in action movies to last us a lifetime, and there's more than enough of those here in SALT. Not so much is added that it might as well establish itself as a remake/re-imagining of any other chase thriller or Cold War espionage plot ever made (which I think is what this movie really is). But to be fair, director Philip Noyce (a long-time action director) and writer Kurt Wimmer had me the moment Angelina Jolie suspects herself as a Russian spy and, tedious flashback sequences aside, never really lost me. Like so many other movies of its ilk, the plot is mostly a clothes-hanger which strings together a series of running scenes. And boy does Angelina run! And just to be dynamic, she jumps in a lot of things too, be it on the back of a passing truck (or three trucks) or an elevator shaft, Jolie's ankles must be aching with all the jumping she has to do in this movie.
The plot is a belated Cold-War paranoia where CIA agent Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is suspected by a defector as a commie, raised in Russia (along with other children) to be sent to America as a mole. A-huh. Yes, the plot is preposterous (but to be fair, it might appeal to any conspiracy buff who felt that they might have missed out on this one), but I'll be honest I was with it all the way, even if I was only holding my laughter a couple of times. The action sequences, whilst predictable and nonsensical at times, are exhilarating, and at 100 minutes it doesn't let up. Sacrificing any dramatic depth in the process, the movie just keeps on moving. It ain't art, and not at all different from a dozen action adventure movies I've seen in a long time, but it does play its part as a summer movie: It gives you all the requisite bells and whistles without having to insult you in the process.