February 4, 2011: Salt
I had considered watching Salt but might not have bothered immediately if not for the Oscar nomination for Sound Mixing. Angelina Jolie seems to be starring in ever more unlikely thrillers and actioners, and Salt pushes the boundaries of plausibility far past anything the viewer can reasonably be expected to forgive, but I found that it had a certain gleefully irresponsible charm, as if it deliberately went so far beyond real-life believability that it could confidently revel in its own manufactured reality.
Angelina Jolie and Liev Schreiber play two CIA agents who have been devoted to their jobs and their country for many years. Out of nowhere, a man comes in and claims that Jolie is in fact a Russian spy, at which point she goes rogue and tries to prove her innocence and save the life of her husband, who she believes to be in danger. This is one of those movies where almost every character is either all good or all bad, but there’s plenty of misdirection along the way to keep us guessing about which ones are which. I guessed a major twist about 13 minutes into the movie, though admittedly that didn’t make the whole movie entirely predictable, since Jolie’s character remained impossible to interpret until near the end. However, it’s all still pretty standard stuff.
But I’m a total sucker for action thrillers with super-spies, so I was totally in my element. There’s just something about individuals being able to escape from full squadrons of police and special forces staff, while at the same time destroying half of a major city, that appeals to me, and I must not be the only one. Jolie jumps off bridges onto semi-trucks, she escapes dozens of people shooting at her in broad daylight, she jumps her way down an elevator shaft, she steals stuff from anywhere and everywhere all the time, and she MacGyvers together bombs and other weapons in minutes while under hot pursuit. It’s completely impossible, and yet I love to believe that it could be.
Salt is ridiculous action filmmaking gone wild, and I loved every minute of it, even though I know it’s total crap. So sue me.
Audiences love spies who can escape.
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