Rating : **1/2
The latest movie from Angelina Jolie, the goddess of adolescent girls and men of all ages, has so many WTF moments that it could be classified as science fiction. Jolie, reprising her action heroine persona from Wanted and the Lara Croft films plays Evelyn Salt, a Central Intelligence Agency operative who may not be who she says she is. Accused by a defecting Russian spy (Andrzej Wajda regular Daniel Olbrychski) of being a Russian sleeper agent, Salt runs for the exit in style, blasting everything in her wake. Her sympathetic colleague Ted (Liev Scheriber) and less-accommodating federal officer Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) follow in hot pursuit, but they are no match for Salt’s athleticism, which allows her to hop off bridges and on to moving trucks and eventually a motorcycle with as much nonchalance as Jason Bourne.
Salt’s gravity-defying escape is an apt metaphor for the plot’s flight of imagination. The movie has assumed a speck of plausibility because of the recent discovery of a Russian sleeper cell in New York City, but it’s doubtful whether the espionage agents were ever called upon to destroy cathedrals and infiltrate presidential bunkers. Even as director Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, Patriot Games) and writer Kurt Wimmer peel back the layers from Salt’s true identity, they simultaneously coat the action with increasingly thick preposterousness. If the movie works at all, it’s because of the crisp running time (100 minutes), Noyce’s ability to handle suspense and explosive action and Jolie’s gritty seriousness. Salt has no time to stand and be sentimental even after she loses her beloved husband (August Diehl). Like a character in a video game, she propels herself towards her goal, unmindful of the damage to narrative logic that trails her. Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor keep straight faces too and play along admirably despite being asked to do little more than cherchez la femme. Nandini Ramnath
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