Originally tailored for Tom Cruise, Phillip Noyce’s Salt is a Cold War thriller combined with Hitchcock’s wrong man premise fashioned as a piece of pulp fiction. Think The Manchurian Candidate on steroids and you have some idea of what you’re in for. Having opted for Knight and Day instead, Cruise can consider his choice a wash, because Salt is just as ridiculous as that film and it too is held together by the magnetism of its star.
Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a CIA operative who, having spent time as a captive in North Korea, has resumed her normal duties at the agency. However, her world is turned upside down when a Russian defector appears at her branch and declares a sleeper agent will kill the visiting Russian president. The assassin’s name is Evelyn Salt. Denying she knows anything of the plot, she flees in an effort to clear her name but begins behaving in ways that give credence to the defector’s claim.
What follows is a relentless chase film in which Salt saves her neck through one miraculous escape after another that employ improbable acts of physical derring-do and more than a few convenient circumstances. In the tradition of all modern action heroes, Salt is seemingly indestructible; how far you’re willing to accept the ludicrous action scenes depends on how badly you want to be entertained. They lost me when they sent a police transport off a bridge and Salt walked away from it without a scratch.
While Salt is nothing more than a highly-stylized popcorn movie, the Cold War paranoia that drives it is an anachronism used as fodder for a throwaway entertainment. Perhaps this is good, a sign that the tension between the two world powers has dissipated to the point that it can be treated so lightly. But in the end, it feels like a cheap stunt, one that leaves us with a bad taste that no amount of seasoning can take away.
This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2010.
