Atlantic City Weekly

Let’s start this review with a disclaimer. While I will compare elements of Angelina Jolie’s new spy-on-the-run thriller Salt to the Bourne movies, I am not suggesting that it is in the same league. However, with the excellent veteran Aussie director Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, The Bone Collector, Patriot Games) at the helm, and the convincing kickass persona of Jolie leaping from tall buildings (well off an overpass anyway in an inventive chase sequence), Salt is a relentless spy thriller that never slows down.

If it did you would begin to realize that her ability to cut though layers of intense security at the White House is more than a little ridiculous. Salt is an enjoyable mix of graphic novel-level action seasoned with a few moments that have the old school spy ambience that the Bourne trilogy revived.

The primary old school touch is the commie Russian element. Sometimes modern spy films don’t want to go back to the current pool of international villains like the North Koreans, the Chinese communists, Muslim terrorists and international arms dealers. Instead, it’s back to the long dormant Cold War when the US. vs. Soviet Union battle was the planet’s scariest throwdown.

This film evokes one of Mother Russia’s most famous urban legends. Several movies and a bunch of 1960s TV shows revealed that the Russians found American citizens with Russian ties, trained them at secret spy camps and planted them in the U.S. as deep cover sleeper agents that could be utilized when the time was right to bring down the United States. Two of my favorites from this genre are the old Charles Bronson chestnut Telefon (1977), and the Kevin Costner-Gene Hackman thriller No Way Out (1987).

Written by Kurt Wimmer (screenwriter for the cult hit Equilibrium), Jolie stars as one of the CIA’s top field agents, Evelyn Salt. Her career is thrown into turmoil when a Russian defector Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), walks into CIA headquarters and claims that a Russian double agent is about to assassinate the Russian president when he visits the United States. That agent is Evelyn Salt.

Salt doesn’t stick around to be locked up until the matter of her loyalty is straightened out. She escapes in an awesome sequence at CIA headquarters that Mission Impossible man Ethan Hunt would envy, followed by a dynamic combination foot, car, truck, and motorcycle chase in Washington, DC. Her chief pursuers are her CIA boss who believes she has been framed, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) and the counterterrorism agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who cannot afford to believe anything until he has concrete evidence.

Who is Evelyn Salt really, is the big question, and as the plot unfolds we are given several conflicting answers. One answer to that question, which allows her to break out of her enigmatic persona, is that she loves her German scientist husband (August Diehl) and despite her training to ignore her emotions, those emotions are what drive her.

If you stop and think too much, the logic - or lack thereof - in the plot will lessen your enjoyment of Jolie showing all the boys how smart, tough and ferocious a female spy in love can be.

Personally, I was content to put my logic center in deep freeze and just enjoy the ride.

Oscar Bait
Adrien Brody might be the only Oscar-winning actor (The Pianist) who felt he could improve his career by playing a badass in the reboot of Predators, produced by Robert Rodriguez. Oddly enough, he pulls it off as one of the scum-of-the-earth mercenaries trapped and released on an alien planet as the “game” in the Predators game preserve. Alice Braga also impresses and Laurence Fishburne provides a funny cameo in this understated action/horror flick hybrid. 

Salt     ***
Directed by Phillip Noyce; rated PG-13

Predators   **1/2
Directed by Nimrod Antal; rated R