Salt (2010, PG 13)

Rating: Null/10 (3 November 2010)

Full of surprises and adrenaline, "Salt" has a dark playful side that relishes in misdirection. What it lacks in explanation, clear intentions, and realism, it makes up in novelty and clever action. The film is a spy thriller involving CIA agents and KGB spies. In this sense, it's something like a remnant of Cold War conspiracy movies. The best parts use frequent red herrings to drive the story, which is evident from the tagline: "Who is Salt?".
Action is its emphasis: fantastic car stunts, close call killings, and spectacular Houdini escapes. Angelina Jolie stars as a CIA agent, named Evelyn Salt, who we discover is an expert at interrogation and, from the looks of it, a supreme master at martial arts, stealth, and marksmanship. She's like a ninja, but the main characters usually are in Kurt Wimmer action stories (anyone remember his Gun-Kata or Gun Fu invention for "Equilibrium", basically a gun training dance?).
Suddenly she seems to question her allegiance to the CIA, but the story keeps her intentions as a sort of riddle. Her close partner is Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), who councils her to avoid taking on desk jobs. We don't need to worry about that. After a Russian defector, Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), walks voluntarily into the CIA headquarters and hints that Salt (Angelina Jolie) might be a Russian spy intent on killing Medvedev (the Russian president), she escapes from CIA custody. Why is she so hasty and quick to flee from counterintelligence agents? Is she allergic to sitting on the other side of the interrogation table? Is her husband in danger? And if so, from who? These questions keep you interested to figure out what's going on. She hunts for her husband and prepares for battle. The plot twists and turns through assassination attempts, sometimes aiming to provoke a war between the U.S. and Russia. Medvedev is a major target while attending a funeral in the U.S. for the vice president. Russia starts to militarize when they find out. The U.S. President is also a target, forcing him to take cover and get his nuclear strike case ready.
It's difficult to give details without spoiling the movie, so here are a few things it isn't (though not as criticism). It wasn't a version of Kurt Wimmer's "Ultraviolet", thankfully. Wimmer went back to writing after his "Ultraviolet" disaster, but in that job he hasn't suffered in the least, and perhaps this film will help revitalize his future prospects (it should). The director of "Salt", by the way, is Phillip Noyce ("The Bone Collector", "Clear and Present Danger", "Patriot Games"), but his touch for military-political intrigue shows through only slightly.
Military strategy isn't central to the story either. It lacks broad detail or chess strategy during its assassination plot sequences, almost treating them as cursory events in the tribulations of Evelyn Salt. You don't get any realistic sense of the U.S. President's guards reacting to the assassination attempts or the two nations (US and Russia) mobilizing forces against one another due to the threats. But they aren't the focus. It's a conspiracy duel between KGB and CIA agents. You are mainly in the position of trying to figure out a typical "Bourne Identity" plot.
Salt weaves through the intrigue. She changes disguises often and avoids any easy to tell moralistic sympathies. She's classy and serious, with time to take care of her little dog and reflect on her husband. She also flies down elevator shafts like Spider-Man. After a series of incredible car crashes, she bandages a small cut on her side when she should be lying in a hospital. But, still, her character has an interesting back story and her flashiness makes the movie enjoyable.
Angelina Jolie has a knack for keeping our curiosity even in the most absurd moments, perhaps best when she turns to the mysterious and dark side. Initially Tom Cruise was asked to play the lead role, but he turned it down, fearing it was too similar to "Mission: Impossible". The locations were shot in New York and Washington, DC on a budget of $130 million. The ending has an obvious contradiction in the dialog pretty much (revealing it would require a spoiler), but in a ludicrous action-thriller written this well, it isn't even annoying.