Warning: SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW
Throughout the whole movie, you are asked the question, “Who is Salt?” By the end of the movie, you still don’t really know much about Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) or how you can trust her. Salt is supposedly a Russian spy who is a cover in the CIA, planning to kill the Russian President. She of course denies this, but goes out on the lamb trying to find her husband (August Diehl), who apparently was kidnapped by the Russians.
The film has had some great action chase scenes, but was somewhat predictable. A couple of the plot twists were obvious ones, like the agency Salt originally worked for. Her partner in the film is Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) who is trying to help Salt while she is on the run from Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who works for Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive.
While the film could’ve been trimmed by ten minutes or so (the long chase scene lasted a few minutes too long), overall it holds its own against some of the other recent political thrillers. And the way the film ended opens up many possibility of sequels or a franchise.
The thing I loved about the film were the brief cameos on some great actors. The first was Friday Night Lights star Gaius Charles and later from Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Street, Men of a Certain Age). What I found bizarre was that Braugher was given fifth or sixth billing for delivering only about three lines and appearing in only about five minutes of film.
While the film has a few flaws (like most films do), it was overly enjoyable and was a hundred times better than I expected. This film should be seen sometime during the summer. You most likely won’t regret it.
Final Grade: 8.0/10
Categories: Movie Reviews, Movies
I agree with a lot of the points you made. It’s predicability though, ruined it for me, mostly. I wasn’t as generous as you in my review/rating. But, it was still a good movie…Agreed! did you like it more than the other summer spy movies (Killers. Knight and Day.)?
forgot to say…glad you mentioned Andre Braugher! I, too, was excited to see him in the film! A great, and often overlooked, actor!
I haven’t seen either of those movies yet. I’m not a Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz fan. And I could list those reasons, but that’d take too long.
I too think I was a bit generous, but I think the plot twist in the White House made it go from a 7 to an 8 for me. But then again, the end in the copter kind of made me want to go back to a 7…ish.