Film Review: Salt (2010)
If Hollywood mourns anything from its past, it is the Cold War. It is not nostalgia for anti-communism, nor particularly Russophobia. It is simply that lazy screenwriters need a villain with some plausible connection to the real world, and virtually every other candidate has been ruled out by the sensibilities of the age. Latin American narcos, Chinese communists, Arab and Muslim terrorists — all are, by dint of skin colour, language or faith, too "exotic" to deploy without accusations of racism. Russians, being white and Christian yet simultaneously inside and outside the Western world, offer a loophole: they may embody evil on screen while no self-appointed guardian of decency asks awkward questions. Vladimir Putin's revival of Russia as a great power and prospective menace was, in this sense, a godsend to Hollywood, and Salt was one of the first films to exploit the new circumstances.
The script even received an improbable assist from reality. Kurt Wimmer's premise of long-dormant Russian sleeper agents embedded in America was given a jolt of topicality by the real-life exposure of just such a network — complete with the Facebook seductress Anna Chapman — shortly before the film's release. What might otherwise have seemed musty suddenly looked ripped from the headlines.
Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative who, after a traumatic imprisonment in North Korea, opted for a desk job in Washington to stay close to her beloved husband, a German arachnologist (August Diehl). Her quiet life is shattered when Russian intelligence officer Orlov (the great Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski) walks into CIA headquarters claiming to defect, and warns of an imminent strike by a network of ex-Soviet sleeper agents. Routine interrogation curdles into nightmare when he names Salt as one of them. Her colleague Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) calls it a misunderstanding; the implacable spycatcher Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants her locked up. Before anyone can get their bearings, Salt bolts — demonstrating astonishing evasive skills against her own colleagues, and leaving ample doubt about her intentions, her loyalty and her true identity.
On paper, Salt promised something a cut above the average Hollywood summer blockbuster, and the production choices bear this out. The role was originally written for Tom Cruise; handing it to Jolie was a shrewd move. She had proved her action-heroine credentials as Lara Croft, and her commitment here was underlined by her cracking her head open during filming. Behind the camera, Philip Noyce — the veteran Australian director of a long and fruitful career — brings genuine flair to set pieces. The bulk of the running time is a near-continuous procession of chases, shoot-outs and brawls, yet Noyce displays real ingenuity in ensuring that no two of them feel alike. The supporting cast, Olbrychski included, is strong throughout.
The trouble is that these talents can sustain Salt as a quality action film only up to the point where Wimmer's script — having shovelled the set pieces in — starts revealing the film's defining flaw. That flaw is a brazen insult to the audience's intelligence: the ease with which the heroine overcomes every obstacle, walks out of every inescapable situation, and strolls into installations that would defeat even Chuck Norris, never mind ordinary mortals.
Now, all of this might be forgivable if the film were a parody or a breezy piece of escapist fantasy in the Bond mould. But Wimmer and Noyce insist on playing Salt with dead seriousness — and the action sequences become steadily less believable as they accumulate, while the absence of humour and of a single credible character becomes annoyingly obvious. A thriller that demands to be taken straight cannot also demand that its audience suspend every law of physics and institutional logic at once.
There is the skeleton of a tight, efficient espionage thriller here, and a committed star and craftsman doing their best with it. But a plot this resolutely daft needed a wink, and Salt refuses to give one. It is entertainment that can be recommended only to viewers prepared to switch off the higher functions of their brain entirely — and even then, one suspects, the better option would be to reach for a Bond film that at least knows what it is.
Rating: 4/10
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