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Salt is an epic thriller, one that does everything that I cannot stand in bad movies yet does it in this good movie instead. It incites rebellion from all action movie directors that have been banging pots and pans in our skulls. It winds your clock tightly and the alarm doesn’t go off for 100 minutes.
This film’s finest quality is how utterly obsessed it is with hilarity. This movie has holes in it so bad you can drive an entire movie through it. The laws of physics seem to be suspended here in the same way as in a Road Runner cartoon. Angelina Jolie runs full speed out into thin air and doesn’t look down until she is safely within the helicopter at the very end.
Jolie is one good-looking woman and I do not need to explain that too. She is always paid a lot of money because of it. The movies have loved other her eyes, lips, profile, biceps, boobs, waist, butt, thighs, and in Salt, her most notable feature, her Chin. Anyone who is capable of jumping from the heights she does here in the manner she does may die from a lot of things, but a sprained ankle won’t be one of them.
The general public is familiar with parkour. As mentioned on Wikipedia, it is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle in one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment. Jolie’s character, Evelyn Salt, makes it look like Run Lola Run was simply about strolling. She literally jumps across the walls of the elevator shaft, which is 8 stories tall, and lands on a few platforms lower than the one she was previously on. Every time she lands, she goes, Oof, and that is pretty much all she does.
You won’t hear much about the plot in this movie. Everything I could share with you would be superfluous at best and dangerous to your appreciation of the film at worst. To put it in straightforward terms She plays a woman obsessed with single-handedly saving the world from nuclear destruction. I’m aware that the storyline is not really logical, but it is certainly fun to witness the random twists throughout the movie, and it’s not like the film lingers over each turn and twist as if it’s just pulled an elephant out of a hat.
Every revelation prompts another chase. Evelyn Salt escapes from and infiltrates one unassailable stronghold after another, singlehandedly and with nothing but her bare hands. She is armed with a few guns, grenades, and a makeshift rocket launcher. You know what has been said of Ginger Rogers that She did everything Astaire did, except backward and in high heels?” Evelyn does everything James Bond did not. Everything that he did without the iconic gadgets of 007, but she did it barefoot on snow.
There is a scene when she is imprisoned in a North Korean torture dungeon that has a concrete floor. While her hands and feet are bound to the space, a rubber hose is shoved into her mouth as she sips on gasoline. That is how the movie starts. I will not spoil what she escapes later on. She works as a spy for the CIA, but now I am letting out too many shocking secrets. Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor also take on some key supporting roles.
The direction of the movie has been given to Phillip Noyce who is from Australia and his work extends from the Tom Clancy thrillers to the magnificent and furious drama of, Rabbit-Proof Fence. Here he displays himself as a master craftsman whose work is supported by the cinematography of Robert Elswit and the editing of Stuart Baird and John Gilroy. The movie has astonishingly numerous chase scenes and those who are keen readers will understand that these chase scenes, in general, are dull for me. It’s something that I seem to understand completely, for reasons only die-hard film watchers will comprehend. A well-executed chase scene is a well-executed chase scene regardless of the reasons behind it. Regardless of how impossible it may be, some sense of spatial coherence must be included, some continuity of movement no matter how much of it comes from stuntwork and effects, and some genuine interest from the audience is a must.
Angelina Jolie truly shines in that area. She brings the conviction to her role that this sort of movie needs. She puts herself into it with the energy of a beast. She looks like a cross between a superhero, because of her immunity, and a brave determined fighter. What about how she looks? She looks gloriously beautiful by default, and there is a scene in an office where she is turning back to talk with Schreiber and you think, oh my. But neither Jolie nor Noyce overplays her beauty and she gets gritty and bloody and desperate, and we get involved.
Although Salt finds an ingenious way to go around history and bring the Russians back as movie villains, neither that nor any of the other elements of the plot need details. It’s all just a hook to hang a thriller on. It is gratifying to see that a genre picture was done brilliantly.
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