Salt

Salt (2010) – at AMK Hub. Just before the weekend screening of Salt at AMK’s Cathay, I was at my class’ end-of-semester barbeque the Friday evening when one of my students jibed that I was catching the film only because of Angelina Jolie.

To be honest, that’s not quite true – and it’s on account that I don’t personally find Jolie that physically attractive, and apologies to all the males who see her as the exemplar of woman beauty. Personally, Jolie’s feminine features are a little too hard and well-defined for my tastes.

But what to make of her newest action-thriller though? Jolie plays a CIA agent named Evelyn Salt and she’s married to some low-key German guy who studies bugs for a profession. Early on in the film during what should have been a routine interrogation with what seems to be a Russian defector, she gets exposed as a sleeper Russian agent whose job is to assassinate high profile targets when activated.

The rest of the film from this point sees her running from the CIA and law enforcement agencies – and in a bit of a twist, not necessarily to prove her innocence. Heck; the film tries very hard to keep you guessing whether Evelyn is really a double agent i.e. she’s really a sleeper Russian agent waking to be activated, or maybe even a triple agent i.e. she’s really a CIA agent posing as a Russian agent while in CIA’s employ!

The film feels like the outcome of a wild mix of Jason Bourne, James Bond, and The Fugitive – wrapped in a package that features a female super agent as the lead pro/antagonist rather than the usual male guy. Jolie looks in top form as she runs circles around law enforcement, outsmarting them at every turn. Very nicely too; the action scenes are filmed without the hyperactive shaky-cam perspectives found in the Bourne trilogy so it’s actually possible to see Jolie karate-chop her opponents, and undertake world gymnastic stunts similar to what you saw in her two Tomb Raider films. It’s all pretty cool stuff, with the two most exhilarating scenes for me taking were when Salt makes good an escape from her apartment block, and towards the film’s final act in the White House.

That said; the film has an absolutely preposterous plot that’s even more absurd than the other recent summer action-thriller Knight and Day starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reviewed here too. The film takes liberties with real world agencies whose personnel I imagine will be taking a very dim view of how they’re represented here. Basically, if you’re in forensics, the Secret Service, the CIA, a Russian sleeper agent, or what makes for the Russian president’s security detail, the film would have you believe you’re utterly incompetent compared to the likes of Evelyn Salt, super-agent.

Also, while the film does try to keep you guessing where exactly does Salt’s loyalties lie – and it does this by minimizing her dialog apparently so as not to belay her real intentions – it was real easy to see where this was eventually going for me. Hint: just watch who she disables and who she kills.

Still, if you can discount the story, Salt gets it right everywhere else. The action is unrelenting, well-filmed, and the relatively compact 100 minute a roller-coasting ride from start to the end. I certainly enjoyed this film more than I did for Inception.