Smart thriller it ain't !

Rating: 6/10 (23 November 2011)

You know the worst thing about such a movie? It's its beautiful directing. (Phillip Noyce) made one solid piece of cinema. The image, the editing, the music.. Just WAW. He seemed haunted by the best spy thrillers in the 1960s. The movie looks accordingly huge and grand. So how come that this is a bad thing? In fact, the script it handled let it huge and grand on the surface, small and embarrassed in the substance!
I admit that the integration's scene at the CIA, put in the trailer and in the movie's start, is just impressive. It promises of smart thriller. The rest smashes this promise into pieces. How many questions were allowed to be asked?! Well, take a list: If Slat is a Russian spy, why to inform the Americans, and by the most risky way ever?! The movie answers that, flimsily, by the Russians' need to a patsy?!! So if Salt is a patsy, why to continue executing operations for whoever deals with her as a patsy? Why not confessing to anyone as long as she became an exposed card already? Why her Russian superiors didn't eliminate her earlier?! It was the top of oddity when Salt pays Orlov a visit later, and tells him about his aging, and not a word about "Why did you inform about me?!!!" Then, if she killed all the Russian organization OF WELL TRAINED ASSASSINS (what an unbelievable scene!), then how in god's name the matter wasn't known to the loose guys of the same organization, like the officer who provided the entrance to the white house, and Mr. main spy?!
Add to that, several marks of cheap goods: provocative coincidences; the Russian politician is alive, exactly in the middle of the world's end?! Uncanny points: Why Salt, in her daily life in America, wears contact lens along with fake teeth?! More than that: How come? Did her husband never notice?! Idiot assuming all the time; nobody sees Salt while getting out of the crashed car under the daylight, in the street's center stage! Stupid casting: the American president looked like a silent dummy. Forced moves; salt takes off her panties to block up the CIA surveillance camera, while her jacket was available and - sure - bigger in size! Yet nothing bothered me more than the fabricated happy ending; it took Salt 1 minute chat, and 2 "You Know Betterrr!" to convince the CIA agent that she's a Russian spy and good guy in the same time, he got too convinced to the extent that he helped her to escape???!!! By the way, how the helicopter's door got dislocated while that?!! Don't answer this! And finally, aren't Russia, nuclear bomb, soviet spies-old memories from the 1980s? It seemed that the movie was written at least 20 years earlier then got made, very late, without any modifications!
(Angelina Jolie) assured that her little mannish face is iconic and expressive, but alas, that was in the wrong place somehow. Look how she begs the creditability at many scenes, since the written material didn't give her any. Look how she's boringly unbeatable. And look at her disguise as a man; it was one of the weirdest at all!
Not some, but all of the action sequences are done superbly. The stunt of jumping over a bridge to a lorry, then to another lorry, did dazzle me particularly. Overall, this movie is a feast of old-fashioned action, something we truly miss in a world of overabundant CGI, and silly flying wires. On the other hand, while being majestic and effective, the music couldn't compensate the lost credibility, rather, it was great long shot.. for emptiness!
It reminds me with a story of a man who went to camping in the wild, with everything might be needed, however after facing the bear, and while being eaten by it, he remembered forgetting a gun. Now (Salt) forgot the factor that could have saved it from being unbelievable nonsense. It's the factor that many Hollywood movies do forget lately: the script. They think that by playing the movie very fast and confident, nobody would notice anything. But being fast and confident didn't save the camping man from his dark fate!
(Salt) is smart thriller visually and sonically, but not mentally. A rare time, and a painful irony, when the "leave your brain at the door" movie is tightly made and annoyingly brainless like this.
P.S: The movie was released in theaters in 100 minutes long. However, the director's cut is released with 4 minutes longer, including an alternative ending. So, should I yell HURRAY, dancing out of joy?! No, based on that tricky mode recently, of selling the same movie twice, I find no comment but "I DON'T CARE!".