Salt

It’s difficult to evaluate Salt without spoiling the film, given the intricate twists and turns that structure the story. Fortunately, the filmmakers have already done the job for me: director Phillip Noyce and writer Kurt Wimmer’s disregard for believable character development and psychological/emotional motivation has produced a mess of a film in which its characters appear to be just as clueless as the audience. Salt is an action film meets political spy thriller meets femme fatale who-dun-it, and amidst this genre melding, gunfire, and fist fighting, the film loses sight of its eponymous heroine. Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, who must evade capture after she is accused of being a Russian spy, and her increasingly desperate measures to clear her name seem only to incriminate her even further. This premise, as simple an explanation as possible for a fairly labyrinthine plot, shifts quickly from intriguing mystery action-er to incredibly cliché political thriller.

The film puts forth a fairly bold possibility in its first third, as Agent Salt’s actions suggest that she is in fact a Russian spy, a highly trained, ruthless, and deadly one at that. It is rare that Jolie, one of Hollywood’s most bankable and sought after stars, would play against type and really be a ruthless Russian killer. She certainly has the charisma and athleticism to pull off such a role, and the expectations associated with her star persona (as a heroine, romantic interest, etc.) would lend immense gravity to a villainous role. Again, not much can be said regarding the specifics of Jolie’s role in Salt, but her character arc is at once disappointing, unmotivated, and cliché. Rather than subverting the expectations tied to Jolie’s star persona in order to take the film in an exciting, unpredictable direction, the script falls back on generic tropes in order to get Salt to her happy Hollywood ending, but we are not offered any valid justification for its existence.

Should the action of Salt have been particularly well orchestrated, one might forgive the stiffness of the film’s characters and the irrelevance of its storyline (Russian spies, really?). Matt Damon, Daniel Craig, or a host of other recent action stars may as well have played Agent Salt, as the filmmakers do not capitalize on what makes Angelina Jolie uniquely Angelina Jolie. She does not use her femininity as a weapon, as a classic femme fatale might, and at one point she even dons a rubber suit and masquerades as a man. And while it is inevitable that Jolie will continue to be cast for her trademark lips and her box-office draw, it is saddening that the team behind Salt could not put the skilled actor behind those lips to better use.

This is not to say that Noyce and Wimmer don’t attempt to flesh out Jolie’s character. There are flashbacks throughout the film that provide a glimpse into Evelyn Salt’s past, as a hostage in North Korea and further back into her youth. Presumably, the intended effect of these flashbacks is to clarify our understanding of and investment in our heroine. Unfortunately, we are not offered a plausible glimpse into the psychology behind Salt’s decisions as a CIA operative turned fugitive mole. These flashbacks, and subsequently her motivations, become lost in a tumult of political intrigue and farfetched Soviet era machinations and the revelations experienced by the CIA agents who pursue her, played by Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, are not shared by the audience. By the end of the film, after all has been said and done and many killed, the viewer is just as clueless as to Salt’s real personality, her motivations and psychology and the reasons for her behavior, as her pursuers were at the beginning of the film. Where has Salt come from? Where is she going? I have no idea, and likely she has very little either. But we do know that she will keep running, she will likely keep shooting, and she will definitely keep looking fantastic while doing so.

                                                 Josh Gordon