Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 40 mins
Director. Phillip Noyce
Cast. August Diehl, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Angelina Jolie, Daniel Olbrychski, Daniel Pearce, Liev Schreiber.
Rating. 51%
Over the course of a 30-year career as both an actress and a director, Angelina Jolie has chosen an array of projects that span a wide variety of genres. She has won an Academy Award (for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Girl, Interrupted) and received a nomination for another (Best Actress in a Leading Role for Changeling). But for the first ten years of this century, she appeared in a series of vacuous, formulaic thrillers as the sexy and sultry, bad-ass female lead. The likes of Gone In Sixty Seconds (2000), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) and Wanted (2008). Salt may just be the weakest of them all.
In Salt, a CIA agent who is accused by a Russian defector of being part of a deep-cover, Russian sleeper cell that plans to assassinate the President of Russia on US soil, is forced to go on the run. The premise establishes a vaguely competent Cold War conspiracy thriller, but Salt soon becomes a relentless sequence of action set pieces, which although well-executed, remain strangely unexciting.
The characterisation of Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is undoubtedly an issue. An unstoppable force, Evelyn Salt is utterly devoid of authenticity. She's beyond cold, with little or no personality to speak of. Angelina Jolie isn't awful in the role; she simply appears unchallenged, and, worse still, uninspired in playing a mere variation of the majority of her roles from the 2000s.
The conclusion of Salt was clearly set up to establish the character of Evelyn Salt as a cinematic franchise. A female Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne or James Bond, if you like. More than a decade after the initial release of Salt, no sequel has ever materialised.
Comments
Post a Comment