Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schrieber, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Director: Phillip Noyce
Screenplay: Kurt Wimmer
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Runtime: 100 mins
Genre: Action/Thriller
Country: USA
There's nary an A-List Hollywood actress working right now that could slip into svelte suits, run like the wind, leap atop moving lorries and blast a horde of armed forces single-handedly whilst maintaining conviction, credibility and physical aplomb like Angelina Jolie does. Honestly, who else does? Despite Salt's ludicrous premise - a CIA agent accused of being a home-grown, planted Soviet sleeper spy to annihilate America's stronghold and kickstarting a nuclear warfare - Jolie roots the whole shebang with a naturally convincing turn as the eponymous Evelyn Salt. In this post-Bond and Bourne era, spies have regained some humanity and emotional conflict, but what's remarkable is that Salt locates a female in this genre populated by the Big Boys with Big Guns, and by the looks of it, Salt is certainly not the one to be messed around with. Salt's fiery intensity feels like she could well wipe out those bunch of Expendables with barely a scratch.
Essentially, Salt is Bourne without the amnesia, and Bond without the glamour. She's a no-nonsense killing machine who fully knows her own mission. It is us, the audience, who could only guess her allegiances in a movie with fast-shifting loyalties and blurring moralities. The narrative twists and turns are beside the point (the story swerves so many times you'd hardly be pressed for getting dazed and confused), director Phillip Noyce is the second director this summer blockbuster arena next to Christopher Nolan to blast the brains of his audience, whether Salt is really a skilfully-trained Russian spy or an American sympathiser. The answer is neither of both. That's why we come back again to Jolie's magnetic presence, whose roles in action films Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Wanted have cemented her iconic status as a top-billing actress who could hold her own ground and guns, who manages to show here her almost feral versatility to jump, leap, run, plunge and then manages to nail emotional brevity in some of Salt's standout moments. The prologue after her release from the North Korean camp, the moment she discovers her boyfriend's (August Diehl) resolve to find her whereabouts, there are tremors of both relief and despair present in her face without saying anything. And later on, in a genuinely agonising moment, Jolie beautifully captures stoicism and betrayal of emotions employing nary a word, and yet letting us view the inner pain within. It's these notes that makes Salt emerge not as an action hero, but a fighter whose losses only contribute to her steely determination in her road to vengeance. Consider her alongside The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo's Lisbeth Salander as one of the recent year's most electric heroines - scarred by a wounded past yet knows how to fight back.
Preposterous as a spy thriller, but masterful as an action movie. Salt is a well-geared and efficiently calibrated slick machine propelled by a terrific dynamo of a performance by Jolie. Her action goddess status is, by now, entirely a league of her own.
