If it can go wrong, it will - Salt

On a very bad day, this is what she does with office supplies.Tom Cruise did not play the lead role in Salt. Good show there!

Salt is a no-frills, no awesome gadgets, espionage is brutal and hard and will probably destroy you sort of movie. Tom Cruise raditating "Why yes, I am that good, I am the great Tom Cruise" would have both undermined it and made the movie an insufferable paean to himself. So yes, even though Angelina Jolie is not my favorite actress, as far as I'm concerned, the movie could only win from the switch.

It's fairly well done and relatively original as far as spy action movies go. It has the added novelty value of being a movie about a female spy with no seduction or supposedly hot undercover scenes in it, which is always refreshing. It is also massively a depressing movie. I don't consider it a spoiler to say... no, the movie did not end in nuclear war. And that's the only thing happy about this movie.

Beyond this point lie spoilers.

No, I am unfair. There are three happy things about this movie. First, the dog lives and is perfectly okay. Second, the only non-white person in this movie to have a name (Chiwetel Ejiofor) survives and is perfectly fine too. And then third, nuclear war fails to happen. Other than that, the heroine's life is pretty much ruined, and so are lots of other lives as well.

Salt has been accused of being a ludicrous, ridiculous movie. I would argue this is not so. It is a perfectly respectable movie with a ludicrous, ridiculous MacGuffin.

If you can get past the idea of Russia back in the Soviet days training children from birth as deep cover moles and assassins and swapping them in for American children with a goal of activating them as adults, you're half way there. You also have to swallow the idea that a bitter genius former KGB leader would attempt to make Russia great again through a plan that basically goes:

Step 1) Start a nuclear war between the US and the Muslim world after framing the US for killing the Russian president

Step 2) ???

Step 3) Profit.

It is ludicrous, but the characters take it very seriously indeed. There's nothing campy or self-aware about Salt in the least. While the protagonist, CIA agent Evelyn Salt, survives things no human being ever could - much like every Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford character ever filmed - the fights come off utilitarian and deadly earnest. You could say the same thing about Jolie's performance as Salt. It's revealing but understated in a way that suits the film well.

It even almost* passes the Bechdel test - Salt talks to a young girl about taking care of her dog when she goes off to save the world.

 Of course, there's one thing that has me headdesking. Apparently in the original male-Salt script, male-Salt saves his wife, whereas female-Salt can't because the director felt it was too emasculating. Since this came out before the movie, everyone assumed that this meant her husband was too macho to need saving. Having seen the movie, I now know that it means that her husband just... gets murdered. For the record, I don't think being taken hostage, than shot while bound, gagged and helpless is less emasculating than getting rescued by a guuuuuurl. Anyone want to debate that?

*I say almost, because as far as I can recall, the girl does not have a name.

Comments

[Gull D. Craig]

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