Salt (2010) dir. Phillip Noyce
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Liev Schreiber

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

I’m not sure this deserves a three and a half-star rating, but its success was such a genuine surprise.

Top of the list of red flags coming into this picture was director Phillip Noyce – the Aussie filmmaker who startled us with 1989’s ‘Dead Calm’ a thrilling Polanski-esque three hander, but then quickly sold out to Hollywood studio filmmaking and movie and movie which never lived up the promise of Dead Calm – there were the two dull Harrison Ford Jack Ryan pictures, Sliver, The Saint, The Bone Collector all films which were technically competent but unmemorable. (note: Rabbit Proof Fence was acclaimed but OK, and I never saw The Quiet American)

Then along comes Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, which seemed to be another high concept action vehicle with the same stench of girl power awfulness as, Wanted or the Tomb Raider movies. But after 10mins or so it became apparent this isn’t just another Phillip Noyce hackfest or Jolie-feminism, but a sharp as nails, tight, no frills actioner.

Part of the surprise is the adherence to an old school action aesthetic. Running, shooting and good old fashioned stunt work provides all the thrills, very few of which are enhanced/engorged with CG, the cinematic equivalent of steroids.

Angelina Jolie portrays Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative, who can shoot guns, fight, ride motorcycles, and MacGyver a bazooka from a fire extinguisher as good as any action hero we’ve seen. What separates Salt from Wanted or Tomb Raider though is the surprising degree of humanness in the character. Before she takes off on her journey, we see her, believably, as a dedicated wife to a supportive and loving husband – and the reason why she exercises her fight or flight syndrome.

The disruption in her domestic life comes in the form of a captured Russian politician who claims Salt is actually a Russian spy planted in the US when she was a child. Fearing retaliation against her family Evelyn takes off, on the run from her own colleagues. On her heels is the whip smart Peabody (Ejiofor) and Salt’s old pal Ted (Schreiber).

Whilst Ms. Jolie is being chased Noyce and company cleverly manage to keep us in doubt as to Salt’s real affiliation – is she a spy? Or is she not? And if she is, does she still have allegiance to mother Russia? Or has she become a card carrying American?

Looking back, perhaps Phillip Noyce was the best person to direct this script. On the surface the idea of a stone cold spy with some memory problems would appear to be another Bourne knockoff with a female twist. But Noyce’s modest production philosophy separates it from the Greengrass’ shaky action. In fact, the tone actually harkens back to 1993’s The Fugitive. Director Andrew Davis, another competent though unflashy action director, never made a better before or after The Fugitive, but the adherence to a simple visual style, but with expertly choreographed action in the realm of realism made for sublime entertainment.

Same goes for Salt.

Other key creative responsible for this success are the editing work of action editor extraordinaire, Stuart Baird, Kurt Wimmer’s script, which is as lean as it can be considering the complicated set-up, and perhaps most important James Newton Howard’s aggressive pulsating score which is quite phenomenal.

The major quibble of implausibility over and above the plot holes (which don’t matter too much anyway) is the leap of faith we must take to believe that Ms. Jolie, who looks all of 100lbs of rake thin skin and bones could actually fight off trained spies twice her size. It's just a small leap though. Salt is a real 'wimmer'.

Salt (2010) dir. Phillip Noyce
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski and Liev Schreiber

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Kurt Wimmer's screenplay for Salt is riddled with the sort of Swiss Cheese plot-holes that normally drive me up a wall, but happily, they only rear their ugly head AFTER the movie is over, and by then, it's too late. As it unspools, the movie is one hell of an amusement park ride and on that level, it delivers the goods and then some.

Wimmer, of course, is no stranger to penning screenplays that border on (or even cross over into) the insanely improbable, but deliver the sort of imaginative, kick-ass set pieces that directors endowed with considerable style and/or proficiency just love. This certainly includes Wimmer himself who directed the studio-butchered, but still wildly entertaining Ultraviolet with Milla Jovovich wreaking havoc in mouth-watering painted-on clothing amidst a dystopian sci-fi setting.

Salt director Phillip Noyce clearly had a ball with Wimmer's script. Whilst dopey as all get-out, the screenplay provides enough forward thrust to keep the audience guessing (though one major climactic plot twist can be predicted right from the beginning) and to provide Noyce with the kind of set-pieces he excels at (being, of course, one of the aforementioned filmmakers who can handle this sort of thing with considerable aplomb). It's a superbly crafted, pulse-pounding summer picture - maybe one of the best action pictures in months. If it weren't so humourless it might well have garnered an even higher star rating from me, but not every genre director can be Brian DePalma.

Noyce, in tandem with ace editor Stuart Baird, has rendered a straight-up, kick-ass action thriller that begins full throttle and escalates from there. In this respect (the only one that really counts with pictures like these), Salt is near-flawless in what it sets out to do.

Noyce, an Aussie helmer who began with smaller art films in his home country Down Under, has made several first-rate and diverse works in a career spanning over thirty years. The chilling 1989 three-hander scare-fest Dead Calm maintains, 20 years after it was first made, a nail biting creepy crawly quality. Starring a lithe, young Nicole Kidman as the fetching trophy wife of Sam Neill (and how they're terrorized by super-psycho Billy Zane on a luxury yacht in the middle oif the ocean), the picture was not unlike a Polanski-inspired version of Knife in the Water or Cul-De-Sac - but with the sort of crank and testosterone that precious Euro-types can only dream of making.

Add to the Noyce mix three bonafide classics of Australian cinema (Newsfront, Heatwave and Rabbit-Proof Fence), the excellent film adaptation of Graham Greene's The Quiet American and his two tremendous Tom Clancy adaptations of the Jack Ryan entries starring Harrison Ford: A Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games, and you've got a director perfectly poised to deliver the goods with Salt, a contemporary Cold-War-styled thriller starring Our Lady of the Lips, Angelina Jolie.

Jolie plays the title character, a CIA operative fingered by Russian defector Vassily Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) as being a Russian spy who will orchestrate an assassination that is going to plunge the planet into an all-out Third World War. Her partner Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) refuses to believe it's true and locks horns with Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) one of his colleagues who believes unequivocally that it is. Lip Lady busts out of the CIA's clutches to clear her name and the movie never lets up with some gorgeously executed gun battles, hand-to-hand ass-whupping, nail biting suspense and chase scenes of the most hair raising variety.

Is any of this vaguely original?

No.

That said, the picture is such a thrill ride that it hardly matters. In fact, Wimmer's script - while all set-piece and little else - does manage enough of a genuine surprise treat in providing a somewhat ambiguous ending which, while it also keeps things open for a sequel - it does indeed leave us dangling in its final moments (but in a thoroughly satisfying manner).

The action set pieces are remarkably well-directed - each shot and each cut delivering blows and the kind of drive that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Noyce is. thankfully, of the old guard when it comes to orchestrating such carnage. There's relatively little in the way of the de rigeur herky-jerky shooting and cutting so prevalent in modern action pictures (notably in the hands of such hacks pretending to be artists like Christopher Nolan). Most of the coverage is solidly framed with a nice mix of shots that not only deliver the goods, but do so in a way that give you a clear sense of geography. Geography is essential in action sequences. It keeps you with the protagonist rather than being bombarded by noise and sloppy cutting.

The performances are all uniformly fine for a picture like this - especially from Jolie. She's an extremely likeable and stylish heroine who must don many visages to make it through the proceedings intact. The only disappointment in Jolie comes early in the picture when she is in the clutches of some nasty Korean interrogators. She's obviously been physically tortured and is about to receive even more punishment.

What doesn't ring true is that Jolie is trussed up, bleeding, bruised and ludicrously attired in her designer bra and panties. Now, I don't want you to think I'm disappointed because she's not buck naked (well, if truth be told, I am), but that all one can think about during this sequence (especially since it's intimated she's been sexually assaulted) is this: Why would her captors strip her down ONLY to bra and panties. It genuinely makes no sense given the context of the scene and you're pulled out of the action thinking only about the fact that (a) Jolie refused to strip down and (b) that the studio didn't want an R-rating.

But, I digress - lack of Jolie nudity is a mere quibble, especially since Salt entertains on the highest possible level and offers just what the lazy days of Summer order.