FILM REVIEW | Salt

There’s no denying that Angelina Jolie is a bona fide badass. Not only did she score a role originally intended for Tom Cruise, but after suffering a (granted, not too serious) head injury while filming Philip Noyce’s spy thriller Salt, she left hospital the following day as if nothing ever happened. Although such statements are often suspect, it is said that she insisted on doing her own stunts, and what stunts! Salt is replete with violent acrobatics that would put the cast of the Matrix films to shame, never mind Cruise, who bailed out because he was concerned that Edwin Salt bore far too close a resemblance to his character in that limping excuse for a franchise, Mission: Impossible.

Well, Edwin has become Evelyn… and this seems to be the only innovation anybody has bothered with in the sleek and much-hyped espionage romp.

Salt’s plot is nearly impossible to summarise without giving anything too much away: in exchange for engaging characters and an immersive storyline, Noyce gives us a twist-a-minute tale of cross and double cross within the context of a good ol’ fashioned anti-commie yarn. Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent who has more than proven her loyalty to her country. But that loyalty is put to the test when a Russian spy, Vassily Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) wanders into the CIA HQ with some tantalizing information: the Russian president will be assassinated on his next visit to America, and his assassin goes by the name of Evelyn Salt. Salt’s life is immediately turned upside down – rushing to contact her husband, the arachnologist Michael Krause (August Diehl, whom you might remember as party-pooping SS officer in Inglourious Basterds), she is now considered an enemy of the state, even as her close friend and CIA mentor Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) struggles to make sense of the situation and justify her actions.

Nobody expects a Hollywood espionage piece to be essentially character driven, but for a film (and maybe franchise) that aspires to emulate the Bourne series, Noyce’s approach is disappointingly flat. One can appreciate that he’d want to jump into the action straight away, but we need to care about the protagonist if we’re going to be taken on a whirlwind journey that asks us to swallow some ludicrous twists and gaping plot holes, even if these come with the genre territory. And a two-minute scene with the lovers, plus some awkward courting flashbacks, just aren’t going to cut it.

It doesn’t help that Noyce shoots everything in a black-and-blue monotone, either. Again, I understand that there needs to be a degree of clinical calculation when it comes to crafting and sustaining a potbolier running on a conspiracy theory fuelled engine, but a touch of humanity would have gone a long way – the fact that there’s barely a single joke cracked throughout makes it all the more difficult to simply go along with the ride – not only is this a superficial narrative enlivened only by contrivances, there is nothing to warm you to Salt, or to anyone else for that matter.

Which leaves us with the action… and that’s pretty much all we got left. Jolie’s acrobatics truly are something, whether she’s jumping onto an oncoming truck or kicking agents’ heads in while dressed as a man, her dedication to the project, at least physically, is something to admire. And she manages to sustain a presence throughout – her stony demeanour is reminiscent of her role in Changeling, only scraped of one emotional dimension too many.

Bourne was a skittish, neurotic character behind his badass veneer… Jolie et al, on the other hand, appear to be enthralled by the idea that what they’re doing is a right-on bit of revisionist feminism that to show any weakness Salt might have would be akin to giving up.

If the decline of the conventional action hero has taught us anything (I refuse to see The Expendables as anything other than a funeral procession) it’s that machismo never really helped anybody. A lesson Noyce should take to heart. Roll on Scott Pilgrim.