SALT - Theatrical review

The circular justification for the implausibility or outright stupidity of every summer action flick is that it's a summer action flick so it's supposed to be implausible or outright stupid. This endlessly repeated excuse is intended to forgive all sins and negate any criticism: "It was meant to be like that. Just turn your brain off and have fun."

Your brain will be off for a long, long time, and I don't know why anyone would want to facilitate the shutdown. But as irritating as this pseudo-argument is, there is (irritatingly) a ring of truth to it. Let's put stupid in the corner for now (where it can lord it over the ones who've killed their brain switches) and talk about implausibility. Implausible is a descriptive term, not an evaluative one. Good, bad, indifferent, epic fail. It comes in all flavors. It is, rather, the kind of implausibility and its execution that matters. There's good silly Bond; there's bad silly Bond. And this eminently absurd film serves good silly Salt and bad silly Salt in roughly equal portions.

The story set up (script by Kurt Wimmer who previously punished us with "Ultraviolet") is pure simplicity. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a happily married CIA agent content with her desk job. One day a Soviet defector (Daniel Olbrychski) turns himself in. While Salt interrogates him, he relates an old-school Red Menace story about children brainwashed to be Russian sleeper agents and planted at the highest levels of American government. He casually mentions the name of one of these sleepers: Evelyn Salt. The rest of the story is even simpler: Escape. Chase. Repeat.

Like the film's cold war paranoia, the opening chase engenders nostalgia for the 80s when action set pieces were all about elaborately staged stunts rather than green-screened actors gawking at computerized explosions and giant robots. The resourceful Salt jerry-rigs her way out of CIA headquarters and leads agents on a very merry chase. Leaping from one truck roof to another on a speeding highway, she leaves her astonished pursuers in the dust. Not a bone-rattling moment of the furiously paced sequence (which lasts nearly a half hour) is even remotely plausible, and it's a pure joy to watch. Director Phillip Noyce manages the silly logistics with aplomb, keeping tongue in cheek while making sure his actors still take things seriously. This is not camp.

So far, so fun, but "Salt," like its title character, undergoes an unfortunate transformation. Recapitulating the last 30 years of Hollywood action films, "Salt" moves from the glorious stunts of the 80s to the physics-defying, hyper-edited mulch of the late 90s and 2000s. Salt, who was so (implausibly) ingenious while eluding a cadre of highly-trained CIA agents before, becomes yet another iteration of the beloved modern cliché of "the gun-toting martial artist chick who totally kicks ass." Bouncing off walls and all but flying down a giant elevator shaft, she prowls along corridors and roundhouses dozens of conveniently lined-up opponents into submission without breaking a sweat. Salt changes from super-spy to cartoon-spy, and good implausible becomes bad implausible in a hurry.

Even the bad implausible would still be entertaining if the hand-to-hand combat sequences weren't so poorly staged. Jolie, a confident performer who understands the power of quiet and stillness, is gifted with a dancer's grace that can't be taught, but Noyce and his team do nothing to take advantage of it. A blur here and a swish there faintly suggest the impression of bodies in motion that we saw earlier in the film, but the frenetic cutting and incoherent treatment of space render Jolie an ornamental presence. Performer and director are out of synch, and the discordant notes, like the pulverizing score by James Newton Howard, assault rather than entertain.

The story, slim as it is, milks some tension from the question of Jolie's true identity. Is she a dirty commie? Will she assassinate the Russian president? Can she save her adorable dog? But there aren't many surprises here, and the obligatory twist at the end would only be a shock if it didn't happen.

"Salt's" goofy dedication to hell-bent action is admirable, and it's more fun than most ponderous modern blockbusters. I loved the 1980s Salt of the film's tour-de-force opening chase. I'd watch a movie with her any time. Unfortunately, The Black Widow-Trinity-Elektra Super-Salt of the last half is generically dull. It's OK for Evelyn Salt to be confused about her identity (it's tough being a double/triple spy), but Noyce's inability to establish a clear identity for the film and its various implausibilities proves its ultimate undoing.