johnlinkmovies

This genre of uber-action involving spies and double-crosses and human beings jumping from the top of one moving truck to another CAN be done well. The MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE series has gotten it right 3 out of 4 times, with only the second film being a misfire. Heck, Angelina Jolie is in one of my favorites of this genre, MR. AND MRS. SMITH. So how does SALT stack up? Terribly, I’m afraid…

I watched SALT (2010) on 4.8.12. It was my first viewing of the film.

So, in this movie, Angelina Jolie is a CIA operative who works deep under cover. There is a chance, we learn, that she is so deep under cover that she may actually be a Russian spy. And, apparently, anybody else could conceivably be one as well. She ends up on the run from her own agency who has been convinced that she is working for the Russians. The movie is one long chase scene in which she also attempts to kill some people.

This kind of movie, as I mentioned above, can be done very well. The proper amount of levity is needed, and the movie needs to know what it is trying to accomplish. Apparently, SALT wants to be very serious about the possibility that Russia has sleeper agents all over the US, that they have all been here since they were little kids, and they could strike at any second. So it wants us to take this seriously, but it also presents us with the sort of super-real action Angelina Jolie engaged in for MR. AND MRS. SMITH.

This movie wastes her, and it wastes Liev Schreiber. Both can be very good, but get muddied in this overly flashy film. Common sense disappears, and instead people just do things at high speeds without regard for the consequences. Again, that could be fine if the movie didn’t stop now and then and try to make us care about the consequences.

To give you an idea of the inanity, consider this. Towards the end, Jolie is trying to convince another agent of something. The agent says ‘even if I believed you, noone else would.’ That would be fine, except the President of the Fucking United States of America witnessed this ‘unbelievable’ act, and (according to the theatrical version I saw anyway), survived the ordeal. I’m pretty sure that the President of the United States is a decent ally to have when trying to convince government agencies of something. Instead of pointing this out to the doubting agent, Jolie jumps out of a moving helicopter and goes on the run.

Usually silly movies like this get very low ‘film’, ‘acting’, and ‘writing’ scores from me, but provide enough of a fun factor to balance it all out with a decent ‘movie’ score. For the first half of this movie, I assumed this would be one of those. Instead, the action gets so ridiculous (like Jolie jumping down an elevator shaft level by level and somehow never getting hurt), that it lost me completely.

The end attempts to tease a sequel. There is a special circle in hell for those movies which don’t know how bad they are and so don’t finish the story so they can make another shitty one. Only nobody cares, so it never gets made. I think the last movie I saw which did this was JUMPER. I can reset that clock now. If a sequel to SALT gets made, humanity is doomed.

SCORES

FILM: 3; MOVIE: 4; ACTING: 4; WRITING: 1

3+4+4+1+0=12

FINAL SCORE: 3

~ by johnlink00 on April 9, 2012.

Posted in johnlink poops on, ~ S ~, ~~~ 2010 ~~~
Tags: action