“The Worst Bond Film Never Made…”
Salt (2010)
Rated PG-13
As a long time James Bond fan, I have been conditioned to expect elaborate action scenes with unbelievable feats of strength, agility, and endurance from spy-thrillers. Normally, this is acceptable because the action sequences merely take place during an actual plot, but they don’t interfere with it. They’re like watching fireworks at a parade. They’re pretty, but they aren’t really designed to be anything else. This week’s selection from the underworld archives, however, takes the cake for the extravagant and absurd action hero, only she lacks the charisma, charm, wit, and bravado of her franchised counterpart. The result is an unsatisfying waste of 100 minutes which serves more to irritate the audience rather than entertain it. When coupled with a storyline that is so convoluted and illogical that you actually find yourself wanting to watch Tomb Raider again so you can get a half-decent yarn, the result is an utter disaster.
What is perhaps even more disturbing is knowing that Philip Noyce (The Bone Collector, Clear and Present Danger) directed this steamer. Here’s a guy that’s done a spy movie or two in his day, and he’s done some damn good ones. He knows how to set up a storyline, produce suspense, and deliver breathtaking action sequences. Why on earth he would agree to sign on to this project is beyond me. It does star the perennial Hollywood home-wrecker Angelina Jolie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Changeling), who has never done anything well except look sexy and adopt foreign children, so I didn’t expect much from the title character to begin with. Liev Schreiber (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Manchurian Candidate) plays by far the most in-depth character in the film, although if you’ve ever seen any of Schreiber’s work, you won’t be surprised in the least by his character’s actions. Schreiber is another actor that I have deep respect for, and I can only assume that there was a very large paycheck involved in his motivation to participate in this debacle. Or maybe he thought he’d get a chance to de-throne Brad Pitt…
The story really begins when a Russian defector reveals a nefarious plan by a group of cold-war era double agents to destroy America. Trained from early childhood to be loyal assassins, the double agents have infiltrated the American government and plan to assassinate the Russian president, in turn starting a world war that will leave America broken in the ashes forever and pave the way for a new Soviet superpower. The assassin is supposedly named Evelyn Salt (Jolie). Salt is one of the C.I.A.’s top operatives, and with this shocking accusation from a completely unknown source, her loyalty is immediately called into question. So, naturally, Salt runs from the C.I.A., which of course doesn’t make her look guilty at all. There’s a big, ridiculous, action-packed escape, and it all goes south from there. The plot swerves throughout the film like a drunken monkey on a unicycle, but basically the audience watches as Salt kicks the crap out of a bunch of people and further muddles her role by double crossing the double-crossing double-crossers, only to double-cross the double-crosser who double-crossed her.
This conspiracy was so fantastically planned and executed that it is inconceivable to have any expectation of success. It merely serves as a platform to watch Angelina Jolie do her best Jason Bourne imitation, and she does it poorly. Nearly every action scene, while I guess you could consider them exciting, is a rehashing of another action scene from a better movie. Motorcycle getaways, crashing cars, gymnastic shooting sprees, jumping from buildings, and even a Mission: Impossible-style face-peeling disguise all make their appearances as the plot lumbers through its twists and turns. The only original action sequence I remember was a getaway scene where Salt subdues her retarded FBI captors in an SUV and manages to drive it from the back seat using a taser to zap the incapacitated driver’s foot on and off the accelerator. Original? Yeah, I guess. Stupid? Absolutely.
For all of its problems, the film does pace itself well. There is little attempt to explain the circumstances of the plot, but doing so would have made an already unbelievable premise even more irritating. There is nothing special about the cinematography, so aside from Jolie, there isn’t much to please the eyes. The acting isn’t terrible for its part, but there just isn’t much to work with regarding character development. The film’s ending seems to set up a sequel, but watching another one of these movies seems too much to bear.
The Bottom Line is this: Salt is too complicated for its own good. It’s not that the audience can’t follow the story, it’s that the story is so unfathomable to begin with that the unrealistic action sequences become too involved in the storytelling. Okay, we get it. She’s a really good special agent. But anyone with the training and experience she’s supposed to have would never put herself in a situation that required such absurd and drastic measures in the first place. In the end, it just doesn’t hold water, and for that reason it falls far short of the expectations of the genre dominated by characters like Jason Bourne or James Bond. Again, I’m not saying that those examples are particularly believable, but they are entertaining because they have action, drama, and suspense in the right doses. Salt tries to do too much in too many areas, and as a result, it falls short in all of those areas. How this movie was given four stars by some critics is a complete mystery to me.              Â
At least Lara Croft wore spandex….
