Skip to main contentAngelina Jolie's Russian-spy picture screened after WW press deadlines. Many agents died to bring us this information.
Salt
WW Critic's Score: 44
America has a problem: Its Secret Service agents are a bunch of glass-jawed pussies. In Salt, dozens of armed guards get their asses handed to them by one lone woman, often in groups of three or four at a time. Granted, the woman doing the ass-handing is a heavily trained Russian spy (...or is she?). But she is played by Angelina Jolie. This should be of some concern to the officials these guys are sworn to protect. Because while Jolie has lately established herself as an action star, in this film she looks as though she weighs about 80 pounds. It was easy to believe she could embody Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider series when she had the body of a video game heroine come to life. As C.I.A. officer turned accused Soviet mole Evelyn Salt, she is so skeletal it wouldn't be surprising if she cracked her femur putting her socks on too fast—yet she's still able flatten dudes with a single wall-assisted ricochet punch. How are we going to win the War on Terror when we can't even keep this sexy bag of bones in custody for more than two minutes?
Jolie annihilating the United States' most skilled bodyguards with little more than her scrawny grandma hands isn't the most preposterous thing in Salt—there are several candidates for that distinction, although the winner may be the scene in which Salt drives a police car from the backseat by repeatedly tasing the incapacitated cop behind the wheel—but it definitely doesn't help. If a movie is going to hinge itself on ridiculousness, as this one does, we have to at least buy into the person doing the ridiculous stuff. And if we can't do that, then the film needs to relish in its own absurdity. But director Philip Noyce isn't aiming for camp. He places Salt in the same exaggerated reality as the Bourne Trilogy, even as his action sequences trample on the laws of physics and earthly logic. That leaves Jolie to make it work by making us believe in Evelyn Salt. And that's one fight she can't win.
It's not even really her fault. After all, it's not like the script gives her much of an opportunity to flesh out the character beyond the ass-kicking and tase-driving. And can she be blamed for looking the way she does? Of course not. But that is, unfortunately, the biggest problem with her as an actress. It's not just that her frail appearance here makes her feats of strength look unreal—she doesn't look real, period. It's the same reason no one ever tried to put Arnold Schwarzenegger in anything other than an outsized fantasy: He is an outsized fantasy. The difference—and tragedy—with Jolie is that she actually can act. So she gets roles grounded on this planet, but no matter what she does with them, she's still Angelina Jolie, the woman with the Mrs. Potato Head lips and eyes like a Japanese cartoon character. Salt isn't Girl, Interrupted, but it takes itself almost as seriously. Jolie's attempt to blend into a crowd by simply dyeing her hair is as funny a notion as man-mountain Ahnold trying to move stealthily across an open field in Commando—except the people who made Commando knew that was ludicrous. Noyce thinks he's tricked us into seeing Evelyn Salt, but we're still watching a movie star. And who believes a movie star can save the world…other than by adopting half its orphans? PG-13.
Salt opens Friday at Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century at Clackamas Town Center, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18&IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
WWeek 2015