Not even Phillip Noyce can create a good film out of a Kurt Wimmer script. With Law Abiding Citizen being one of the most inane cinematic offerings last year, I decided to embark on a seemingly impossible task: wash it from my memory and start fresh with Salt. Little to my surprise, Salt is nearly the same film. Replace the ridiculous characters and paper-thin plot and you have the same infuriatingly obnoxious twists that occur at breakneck speed across the third act, as well as a new set of absurd characters to play out the slim plot.
Our investment in the twists and the characters doing the twisting is founded upon sloppily inserted flashbacks in which Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) conjures up whenever the time is right. Flashbacks aren’t strictly relegated to character development though, they are also used for plot. After a promising prologue involving a captured Salt being freed from a North Korean prison camp by the US, we flash forward two years and they are holding Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), a defector who accuses Salt of being a spy. His confession is filled with pandering images explaining a back story that is supposed to set up Salt’s character, but instead just creates a narrative brick wall for the already slow burning scene.
Once things get going and Salt begins her run from authority, Noyce blows his wad in the first (and only) solid action scene of the film. Before full-on absurdity takes force, Salt needs to find her way out of the CIA office. With fancy home chemistry and impressive building scaling tricks we are right with Salt as she defies the very people she was working for. I’ll even suspend my disbelief as she jumps from 18-wheeler to semi to truck across 3 cascading highways (in Albany disguised as Washington, D.C.). But there is a point when enough is enough. This involved Salt jumping out of a side-door of a barreling underground subway only to continue her mission the second she hit the ground.
Whereas last month’s Knight and Day (starring previously rumored Salt star Tom Cruise) had these absurd action scenes, it worked seamlessly with the laidback, comical nature of the film. Salt, much like Law Abiding Citizen, has a somber, nearly sadistic tone throughout that throws any sense of fun out the window. Even the score, by James Newton Howard, features heavy guitars anytime Jolie does something bad-ass. This kind of patronization and clear disconnect with the scene at hand will either cause you to laugh in embarrassment or have you shaking your head.
If you fall in the latter group, you must be prepared. The amount of preposterous twists and set pieces that occupy the last two thirds will have you pulling a muscle. It could be when Salt catches up with an elevator as she jumps down level to level, with what looks like CG effects of a weightless monkey. Or it could be when the president decides to set off a global nuclear attack with no hard evidence. Or it could be when a certain character rips off The Joker and causes an inner body explosion. Or it could be when a single CIA agent kills the entire US executive branch. Or it could be when someone escapes from a federal helicopter in air after just breaking the neck of a high-ranked CIA agent in front of hundreds of people.
I’d be willing to let loose and enjoy all these events but Wimmer never finds the right tone, a problem that continues to plague him. Supporting performances from Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor do their best to work amongst the atrocious script. Jolie can lead the action, but during the very few moments we slow down it’s hard to buy into a character that was not much of anything to being with. The ending leaves it open for a Bourne-esque trilogy, something I would mind if a new screenwriter was brought on. Until then, avoid Salt with all of your cinematic cuisine.