Salt - As in 'to be taken with a pinch of...'

Rating: Null/10 (28 June 2011)

About fifteen years ago the big screen became swamped with adaptations of comic book superheroes, both well-known and relatively obscure. One of the reasons for this was because filmmakers were able to take advantage of computer-generated effects whose sophistication rose in direct correlation to their drop in price. Today, with the superhero well more or less run dry, they've decided we no longer need to be fooled into believing the kid next door can develop super-powers when he's bitten by a radioactive spider. Hell, why go to such extreme lengths to justify the use of mind-blowing sfx? We'll just make the hero a medium-height, underweight woman who can balance on two-inch ledges ten floors up, leap from the roof of one moving container lorry to another, descend a lift shaft with acrobatic grace, emerge from a spectacular car smash without a limp or a grimace, and beat the crap out of trained men twice her size.
The movie Salt is wrong in so many ways and on so many levels that it's difficult to know where to begin. Cynicism abounds – from the writers who believe a protracted chase sequence lasting forty-five minutes is actually writing (lets face it, the film's first forty-five minutes probably used up maybe three pages of double-spaced script) and that inserting an increasingly ludicrous plot twist every five minutes will divert everyone's attention from all the other plot deficiencies, to the leading lady who undoubtedly knows a lucrative little franchise when she sees one. Philip Noyce directs with panache, but then he has to in order to paper over all the cracks.
In the film's defence, it's fair to say that probably nobody involved took it particularly seriously, and so the audience should really treat it the same way. Because it does provide a mindless entertainment, even though your neck will ache (unlike Evelyn Salt's) from all the shaking of your head as the audacious plot unfolds.