Salt

2/5 stars

Contrary to what you might think, Salt does not contain any condiments, salty or otherwise. It does, however, feature quite a few spiders and of the sort that’ll make any arachnophobia run away screaming.
Here’s the set up. A Russian agent defaults to America and accuses Evelyn Salt of being a KGB sleeper. The spy also says that a Russian ambassador is going to be murdered at a funeral. Evelyn realises her husband is missing and goes rogue to find him.
The premise is only borderline original and the action sequences are dull- you’ll have seen them all before, I promise. There’s a particularly memorable moment where Evelyn Salt is fired at, while on top of, what looks like, an oil tanker. Far as I can recall, that usually creates a large explosion. But not this time. In fact there are relatively few explosions in Salt, which is actually quite refreshing for an action movie.
I also praise Salt for a lack of CGI stunts, with one glaring exception where Salt traverses a lift shaft by leaping from girder to girder and spectacularly not dying. Which, with the length and way she fell, is a miracle considering something like that normally makes you miss, slip or land so hand you break your ankles. But this is an action movie. Improbable and impossible stunts are us.
It’s the characters that make Salt. Not so much Salt herself; she has about the same relationship to a normal human as a spanner does to a stick insect. Played by Angelina Jolie, Salt is there to kick butt and look pretty (though I don’t actually think she’s pretty). But her husband and her colleague, Ted Winter, are not only well acted, you can’t help caring about them. Unfortunately, only those two. I don’t even feel much for Salt, who goes from someone quite normal (for a CIA operative) to a woman without a grain of humanity. There are plenty of badass women out there in films and, if done well, they have something in them that the viewer can relate to. Salt doesn’t have anything like that, for the best part of this movie.
In many ways, this is a Jason Bourne movie, without Bourne.
So, then, it is also the characters that let Salt down. Having nothing likeable in a protagonist is bad and worst still, I never really understood what her game plan was. I can’t say much more without giving away significant plot so excuse me for being vague. But Salt’s actions quickly get confusing and I was left shouting, like a mad hobo, ‘what?’ but…I…what?’
With a protagonist like that, and bugger all else to root for, it’s difficult to like Salt as a film. There’s plot holes all over the place and Salt seems to like ignoring rules like gravity and the amount of damage a person can take. There’s also the inevitable countdown-defies-normal-measurements-of-time sequence.
To wrap up, then. Worth a shot but don’t expect too much of it. Make a drinking game out of it and take a shot whenever you start getting confused. Perhaps it’ll look better through the bottom of a pint glass.