Review: Jolie’s latest dish is all Salt and no spice
There is a reason why Inception is still the top trending topic on Twitter, one week after its global release.
Even with its flaws, and it had several, the movie does not insult its audience with a lacklustre story or rely solely on the star power of its lead actor to keep the cash registers ringing at the box office – all the mistakes that Salt is guilty of.
It is painful that a director such as Phillip Noyce, whose noteworthy films include Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger from the early nineties, would be reduced to cook up this tasteless fare that misses all the vital ingredients which make for an adrenaline-charged summer entertainer.
The film opens in a North Korean jail, where a skimpily clad Angelina Jolie is being tortured for her role as an American spy.
Five minutes and a prisoner exchange later, we firmly establish two things: This is a prettily packaged revenge drama with Jolie’s onscreen husband Mike Krause (August Diehl) playing the protagonist; and that the painfully thin actress has lost her sex appeal to pull off another Lara Croftesque role.
Jolie’s Evelyn Salt is an undercover CIA operative, who, along with her mentor Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), bring the badass of criminals down to their knees with a flick of their finger.
When Russian agent Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) waltzes into the CIA offices and accuses Salt of being a sleeper KGB agent out to kill visiting Russian President Matveyev (Olek Krupa), our femme fatale leaps, flies, bashes intelligence officers and whips up makeshift flame throwers from household cleaning equipment that would put even MacGyver to shame.
Upon discovering her husband has been kidnapped in the process, the bloodthirsty Salt does the obvious and knocks off the Russian Prez, and predictably puts off killing Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the government operative who’s heading the chase to bring her in.
If you haven’t already guessed the plot by now, that telling scene unspools exactly what will happen in each corresponding frame until the end credits roll in.
Rivers of blood flow, not Salt’s of course, whilst enough ammunition is wasted to satisfy a small country’s army.
The CIA, FBI, Counter Intelligence Units and the Secret Service are reduced to bumbling idiots at the mercy of Salt, while she gleefully obtains an all access pass into high security buildings, the White House and even the impenetrable bunker that lies beneath the stately United States Presidential home.
Producers Bonaventura Pictures and Relativity Media, along with distributors Columbia Pictures, will probably recoup their expenses considering Jolie can almost guarantee to pull in the weekend crowd.
Plus, the recent news reports of sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman and 11 others caught in the ongoing diplomatic crisis in the US will certainly hit home for many and work in the film’s favour.
Jolie on the other hand does not emerge unscathed.
She struts through this senseless misadventure with two basic expressions plastered to her gaunt face, while the audience – which isn’t blindly lusting after her – wonders whatever happened to the actress who once gave us films such as Girl, Interrupted, A Mighty Heart and, heck, even Wanted.
As for director Noyce, he loses the plot the moment Jolie’s Salt defies all basic laws of gravity and leaps through the air in ways that would put even Superman to shame.
The script itself has enough holes to resemble a sieve and its painful to even think a sequel could be in the offing.
A word of advice Mr Noyce: All Salt and no spice is a dish that simply does not entice.