The Gown Student Newspaper at Queen's University Belfast

REVIEW: Salt

Considering recent world events involving Russian spies caught living on American soil, the timing of Salt’s release couldn’t have been better nor more ironic. Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, who is accused of being a KGB Sleeper Agent and goes on the run to try to clear her name. Well, sort of. Salt follows similar routes with like-minded plots seen in films such as the action-packed Bourne trilogy and Tom Cruise’s ridiculously over the top, yet highly entertaining, ‘Mission: Impossible’ films.

BY ANDREW MOORE

Surprisingly the film isn’t nearly as awful as I was initially expecting, and the action sequences are fairly well thought out. However, Salt stumbles a few times through some absolutely absurd storytelling, which is just too convoluted for words. Whereas the Bourne trilogy unravels a mystery over the course of three films, Salt is perhaps guilty at times for revealing too much too quickly to make even the calmest of heads think, “WTF?”

Despite her, rather irksome, off-screen exposure in various gossip magazines around the world, it is easy to forget Angelina Jolie is actually a pretty decent actress. Though the decision to applaud or simply denounce her persistence of pursuing these action heavy roles is always a struggle.

Despite her Oscar glories in beautifully crafted cinematic dramas she seems to get a kick from making films such as the utterly terrible Tomb Raider movies, the silly, yet playful, Mr and Mrs Smith and the woeful adaptation of the Mark Millar’s graphic novel, Wanted. Perhaps she just likes these types of roles where her characters are one woman war machines who seemingly can’t be killed by conventional weapons.

In Salt, Jolie fails to expand on these recurring character traits and does the exact same thing we’ve seen her do in the aforementioned films. No wonder Tom Cruise turned down the role because it’s literally Ethan Hunt crossed with Jason Bourne.

The supporting turns from, the gloriously underrated, Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor were much more compelling than the soulless, grey ‘US government villains’ in pretty much every other action film seen in the cinemas this summer, from The Losers, to The A-Team, rounded off with The Expendables.

However, one of the main issues with Salt is that it’s perhaps 25 years too late to be truly relevant in correspondence with world events. Did no one tell the writers the Cold War is over? Those ‘Soviet Russians’ might have looked effortlessly evil when placed in Sean Connery era Bond films, but just doesn’t strike the same chord with modern day audiences.

Salt is without a doubt the best of Jolie’s ventures into the action movie genre and if a proposed sequel is indeed in the works, there are, frankly, much worse ways to spend money in the cinema. The set pieces are delightfully over the top, typically defying logic yet still loads of fun to witness on the big screen. As for the plot? Well, best take that with a pinch of…No. Too easy.

Tags: Andrew Moore, Gown, newspaper, qub, Queen's, queen's university, Salt, student, students, The Gown

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Arts + Ents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.