Salt (2010) – Review

For a while there, it seemed like the spy movie was predominantly a boy’s club that gave such agents as James Bond, Jason Bourne and other super-spies with more varied initials free reign to rule the roost. But while no attempt to give us a female super spy has thus far managed to offer up a rival franchise, I feel we came insanely close with Salt, a vastly above-average actioner that saw Angelina Jolie add another incredibly physical string to her butt-kicking bow.
In case the facts have been lost to the mists of time, or locked away in the vault of some sinister superpower, Salt was originally supposed to be a vehicle for Tom Cruise, who jumped ship once he remembered that he already had a famous government agent to call his own (don’t be hogging the spies, Tom). However, with Phillip Noyce at the helm (director of such thrillers as Dead Calm and the Harrison Ford era of Jack Ryan movies), and Jolie throwing herself into the most physical role of her career, you know that a sprinkling of Salt should be quite tasty…

After being imprisoned by the North Koreans under suspicion of being an American spy, Evelyn Salt is eventually brought home after the CIA, and her dedicated arachnologist boyfriend, manage to create enough negative publicity to get her freed. However, in the first stunning reveal of many, both we and the well-meaning Mike discovers that Evelyn actually is a CIA operative. Two years later, we find Salt married to him and still working for the Central Intelligence Agency, but her life is about to be put into a gigantic, political blender when she’s chosen to interrogate a Russian defector while colleague, Ted Winter and counterintelligence officer Darryl Peabody, look on. However, soon they get onto the subject of a Soviet-era plot to destroy America, and learn that sleeper agents known as KAs buried deep in key positions are poised to rise up and bring the country down from within, starting by assassinating the Russian president on US soil. As bad as all that sounds, things can still always gets worse, and a very complex situation suddenly goes nuclear when the defector announces that the name of KA sleeper agent assigned to the task is named… Evelyn Salt.
Before you know it, Salt makes a break for it, desperately protesting her innocence and mounting a Jason Bourne-style escape by building a rocket launcher out of a fire extinguisher and various cleaning chemicals (as you do). But while Ted insists that there has to be something fishy is going on, Peabody isn’t taking any chances. And so, before you know it, Salt is on the run with the entirety of the CIA on her tail – but here’s the thing: what if Evelyn actually is a sleeper agent for some sort of lethal Russian plot? Her concern for he husband suggests that she isn’t, but then why does she attend the funeral the Russian President is due to attend with determination etched on her face?

Whenever an equiry arises about why there can’t be a female James Bond, the answer is simple – there can, but she’d have to be a good character, and she’d have to have a compelling story, and while Salt gets pretty preposterous as it bounces from bruising encounter to stunning twist and back again, she pretty much fills that brief completely. Taking more of a grounded, Jason Bourne approach to international espionage (at least until she starts leaping about on moving traffic like a big-budget Frogger) we are presented with the sort of resourceful, driven character that Jolie used to love playing once upon a time. Showing up mere months after Scarlett Johansson first popped up in a black catsuit in Iron Man 2, Salt displayed a similar tenacity and ability to whale on guys twice her size with some flashy moves, but while Natasha Romanoff’s shady past was delivered up front, Salt origins came unraveling to deliver shock after shock.
Salt is also one of those movies that you can’t really dig into the real gristle of it unless you spill some of those secrets – so that’s precisely what I’m going to do… so, y’know… spoiler warning.
For those still tuned in, the whole film ends up being built around the fact that Salt is actually every inch the Russian sleeper agent she’s being accused of, and director Phillip Noyce is obviously having a ton of fun fucking with the audience virtually non-stop. First we think Salt is a civilian, then we find she works for the CIA, then we find she’s a sleeper agent and the movie keeps pivoting while somehow alternating between making their lead character both the antagonist and protagonist. Double agent? Triple agent? Russian turncoat?

Whenever things threaten to get too convoluted, Noyce drops in a huge, Bourne-esque action sequence, which should give you an idea of how complex it gets considering the movie practically has wall to wall setpieces. Escaping her CIA offices (complete with Death Star blast doors) by going all MacGyver, or audaciously flinging herself from moving truck to moving truck to avoid Chiwetel Ejiofor’s unwavering bloodhound, the movie keeps you on the edge of your seat despite the fact that you’re genuinely unsure if you should actually be cheering for this woman. It’s exactly this kind of story hook that makes Salt stand out from virtually every other female-led spy film ever made and despite the occasional slip, it’s actually a fucking crime we didn’t get at least one sequel, especially considering it has such an enticing ending.
Some lovers of international intrigue may complain that Noyce pushes the action button way too frequently to really build the tension, but no one seems to complain when the Mission: Impossible movies do it. Although I would argue that Jolie’s attempt to infiltrate the U.S. President’s nuclear bunker by disgusting herself as a man makes her weirdly looks like every lead singer from every K-Pop boy band you’ve ever seen. Plus, if you need to hire an actor to garner sympathy as Salt’s innocent husband, maybe don’t cast the SS Officer who rumbles Michael Fassbender in Inglourious Basterds – but beyond this, Salt’s pretty damn good, and it refuses to pull punches too. The action carries significant and sufficient weight, Liev Schreiber gives great support as the plot gets ever twistier and not only are there constant surprises beyond Jolie shifting allegiances as often has her hair colour, but we’re gifted a final act kill involving a pair of manacles and a stair banister that’s absurdly satisfying. In fact, anyone complaining about a lack of convincing female action heroes needs to check themselves, because we got a bloody great one in 2010.

Unjustly never granted a sequel, which would have seen her hunting her fellow KA agents, Salt joins the ranks of The Long Kiss Goodnight’s Charly Baltimore and Atomic Blonde’s Lorraine Brougton as kickass female agents who were never granted a second mission. Action packed and loaded with more twists and turns than a twisty turny thing (thanks Blackadder), watch this and prepare to be… ass-Salt-ed.
🌟🌟🌟🌟