Salt (2010)
Directed by Phillip Noyce
As a CIA officer, Evelyn Salt swore an oath to duty, honor, and country. Her loyalty will be tested when a Russian defector accuses her of being a Russian sleeper spy. She goes on the run, using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative to elude capture, protect her husband, and stay one step ahead of her colleagues at the CIA. Her efforts to prove her innocence only serve to cast doubt on her motives, as the hunt to uncover the truth behind her identity continues and the question remains: "Who is Salt?"
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37 films that influenced Salt
What critics say influenced Salt
It nods to classic suspense flicks - "The Manchurian Candidate," "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," "Three Days of the Condor" - without seeming dated.
At the start, you may be reminded of such Ford administration classics as “Three Days of the Condor” — a thriller that contains almost nothing like an action scene.
A dash of Bourne Identity series here, a pinch of Die Another Day, From Russia With Love and Mission: Impossible III there, a little Manchurian Candidate for flavor, and a hint of Three Days of the Condor and voila... you've got Salt.
A neo-Cold War thriller would seem like just the ticket for cineastes who fondly recall Iron Curtain-courting capers on the order of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Fail-Safe and select James Bond exploits.
The truck-jumping scenes recall similar acrobatics performed by Yeoh and Jackie Chan in the Police Story series from Hong Kong's golden age of action movies.
Just when we thought that Hollywood had emerged from the stock Cold War villain era, Australian director Phillip Noyce (Rabbit Proof Fence, Patriot Games, Dead Calm) has cleverly resurrected the classic US enemy in an espionage thriller reminiscent, in story and style, of Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur.
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She escapes in an awesome sequence at CIA headquarters that Mission Impossible man Ethan Hunt would envy, followed by a dynamic combination foot, car, truck, and motorcycle chase in Washington, DC.
With Bourne and Bond MIA, and Tom Cruise in the infinite stages of creating another Mission: Impossible, it is up to a woman to get the job done.
Originally tooled for Tom Cruise, who nixed the project as being too close to his Mission: Impossible ID (pity he didn’t make the same call on Knight and Day ), CIA Agent Edwin A. Salt is now Evelyn Salt.
A later, "Mission Impossible" style disguise is fun while more in keeping with Noyce's world.
Next time around though, Salt should be dispatched on an assignment that’s more Mission: Impossible than Mission: Implausible .
However, Cruise felt it was too close to his Mission: Impossible films (he's already done the rogue on the run) and decided to back out, leaving the role open for someone else.
Some of the action work is even more venerable: Orlov overcomes two captors in an elevator with the old switchblade-in the-shoe-toe trick memorably used by Lotte Lenya as SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb in the second Bond film, From Russia With Love.
A dash of Bourne Identity series here, a pinch of Die Another Day, From Russia With Love and Mission: Impossible III there, a little Manchurian Candidate for flavor, and a hint of Three Days of the Condor and voila... you've got Salt.
There have been various attempts: Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight ; Annie Parillaud in La Femme NilkitaM .
Not since the brief heyday of Geena Davis (sue me, but I still love “The Long Kiss Goodnight”) has a Hollywood actress with an Oscar at home demonstrated such capacity for big-scale, take-no-prisoners action.
With Richard Kimble in The Fugitive we were clued into his innocence immediately.
So, yes, the movie is part “The Fugitive.’’
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As he leads Salt - which boasts fine, if unexceptional cinematography by the extraordinary Robert Elswit (who at the very least knows how to light Jolie to perfection), and a power team of action editors including John Gilroy (of Michael Clayton ) and Stuart Baird (of Lethal Weapon , and more recently Casino Royale ) - it is a film that combines high-speed cutting and crazy movement with an unusually refined eye for continuity; it is the neo-action film for all those people who considered The Bourne Ultimatum to be upsettingly disorienting.
Most of what happens is completely illogical and there’s simply not enough personality here to elevate the action into something more powerful like we’ve seen in films like “The Bourne Ultimatum” or “Casino Royale.”
In particular, Salt’s reveries about romance and marriage with a German arachnologist (August Diehl) have a softness and soulfulness not unlike “The Constant Gardner” or even, so help me, “The English Patient.”