Salt

Yes, indeed, "who is Salt?"  With a question like that, you might expect Salt to be a movie of mistaken identities, or perhaps something involving multiple personalities or amnesia (a la Bourne).  Those expectations will not be met by this film.

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is happily married to a decent-looking (and I'm being generous to August Diehl here) spider-scientist.

No, I meant a scientist that studies spiders, not the other way around.

A few years back, before they were married, Evelyn was captured in North Korea and accused of espionage.  Somehow, her hubby-to-be persuaded the powers that be to release her, and they got married in one of the least mutually attractive film marriages of all time.  Still bloodied and bruised from her interrogation, Evelyn tells her man that she is really a CIA agent, and that he will never be safe as her husband.  Fast-forward a few years, and the completely healed Evelyn Salt is back to work with the CIA, along with her superior officer, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber).  The pair are called in to check out the validity of a supposed Russian spy that is looking to defect and, I assume, wants to live in America to drink Coca-Cola and wear blue jeans.  This defector, Vasilly Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), tells Salt, Winter, and a room full of agents that are monitoring for heart rate and fact-checking details, about Day X.  This is a long-term plan by a former Soviet spy master where he planted child assassins into America, with the intent of using them (after they grew up) as sleeper agents to one day destroy the United States.  In fact, a sleeper agent is supposed to assassinate the Russian president tomorrow.  That agent's name is...Evelyn Salt.  Wha...?!?

After such a heinous accusation, the obvious next step is to quarantine Salt, to at least make sure she isn't a Russian sleeper assassin, right?  That's what agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) tries to do.  However, he makes the mistake of letting her call her bug-loving hubby first --- and he's not answering the phone!  Oh no!  The next thing you know, Salt is beating the living hell out of her fellow CIA agents and pulling some serious Mission: Impossible stunts to escape and learn her husband's fate.  But...if she's just interested in finding her husband safe and sound, why is she preparing to assassinate the Russian president at the same time?  Just who is this Salt, anyway?

If you are looking for a highly intelligent spy caper, or at least something that could have been adapted from a book, Salt is not the movie for you.

NOT the inspiration for the movie, but an excellent read.

On the other hand, if you are in the mood for an absolutely ridiculous action movie, this might be right up your alley.

What keeps this film from being a serious spy movie?  The acting, for starters.  Angelina Jolie is fine as the title character, but her role is meant to leave the audience guessing, so she plays it pretty stone-faced.  She performs her stunts very well, though, which balances that out a bit.  The only part of her performance that I didn't care for was her running scenes; I've seen people run fast, but there is no way Angelina Jolie was running fast enough to break a nine-minute-mile, much less outrun half a dozen athletic government agents that are not wearing a sexy skirt.  Liev Schreiber was similarly unemotional, but adequate in his part.  I'm not sure if I am just indifferent to the man, or if I still hold a grudge for his part in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Yeah, that's how I felt when I watched that movie, too.

I actively disliked the normally likable Chiwetel Ejiofor, if only because his character bobbed between Batman-level anticipation of Salt's moves and idiotic mistakes, like leaving her alone in an unlocked room.  The rest of the cast was not particularly noteworthy, but I would like to one bit part.  Andre Braugher, one of the great speaking voices in modern movies, had about 15-20 minutes of screen time and only two lines; has nobody seen how good he was in Homicide: Life on the Streets?  Somebody give the man a decent role!

Phillip Noyce is no stranger to directing silly action movies.  After all, he gave us The Saint and my all-time favorite blind samurai movie, Blind Fury.

Don't judge a book by its cover, but it's probably okay to judge movies by their posters.

Noyce does a very good job with the action scenes, which make up a large part of the movie.  I don't know if I completely buy a non-super-powered Jolie beating up hallways full of armed government agents, but Noyce made it look plausible, at least.  The direction falters when any emotion is supposed to be shown.  Every emotion is muted; I would be shocked if I was working with someone who was accused of being a sleeper agent, but everyone in this movie kind of takes it with a grain of, um, sand.  I understand that some scenes are meant to be misleading (this is a spy movie, dumb or not), but there is no emotional payoff to any of this.  It doesn't have to be huge (look at the Bourne series, for instance), but this movie needed more than the script supplies.

I keep mentioning that this is a silly or dumb action movie, but I haven't really gone into detail so far.  I just wanted to get the boring critiques out of the way first.  The moment when I realized that this was not going to be a realistic or gritty movie was when Angelina Jolie's character (who looks very much like her) marries August Diehl (who looks very much like Peter Doherty).  That alone set off warning lights in my brain.  The next bit of silliness involves the defecting Russian who escapes CIA headquarters because he was hiding a retractable knife in his boot.  How did that get past the already-established-in-the-film high security protocols?  Whatever.  The important thing is that the audience understands why Salt is running from the CIA.  At the 30 minute mark, the answer is...because she doesn't want to be caught.  At the 45 minute mark, that reason hasn't changed.  In fact, it isn't until the climax (or, if you're clever, the hour mark) that you know for sure why she has done anything that she has done in the movie.  And it's not like there is any suspense surrounding her motivations; it's just part of the story that the plot has conveniently left out.  There are a few other laughable moments --- Jolie disguised as a busty Ralph Maccio (my wife's description) and a military computer that uploads with the speed of dial-up --- but it was the complete lack of suspense surrounding Salt's inexplicable actions that really bothered me.

This is a very solid action flick, though.  Jolie looks good and tough in all of her stunts (except her distance running), and some of her stunts are pretty damn cool.  I liked that, for a little while anyway, the government agents (who you just know are outmatched) actually keep up with Salt for a while; her first getaway is a car chase where the CIA are right behind her, despite a series of stunts that would have been the climax in most other chase scenes.  Jolie was convincing in the rest of the fight scenes, too, beating up and exploding a few dozens godless Russians here and there.  Some of the action scenes were surprisingly inventive, too.  It's too bad we never actually see any sort of planning stages for these attacks, because I think that would have added an extra layer of awesome to a story that needed a little more of that key ingredient.

There is something to be said for the film's pace, though.  The story is definitely the weak point, but it is smart enough to have chase scene after chase scene until the movie is over.  I will give Jolie and the other actors credit for never winking at the camera, either.  Yes, this is a ludicrous action movie.  But it is an Action movie, with a capital "A."

Of course, that's more of a "is it a good movie?" sort of rating.  If I'm in the mood to laugh at the stupid plot and just bask in the gratuitous chases, I give this a Lefty Gold rating of

The Mist

Do you love stereotypes?  If so, then I have a movie for you!  It's called The Mist!  It's about a mysterious mist that envelops a town.  I probably should have written "Spoiler Alert" before that sentence.  Oh well, it's too late now.  Yes, this is another movie where a small group of friends/naughty teens/townspeople gather together in a building, trying to stay safe while zombies/vampires/serial killers/monsters/weather reign supreme outside.

I'm not against this story formula, mind you.  Most zombie movie follow it, and 30 Days of Night was the best vampire movie I've ever seen.  The enemy this time is, predictably enough, in...the mist.  DUH DAH DUMMMMM!!!  The building that townspeople gather in happens to be a grocery store.  So we've got a novel location and mysterious natural-looking phenomenon.  With those two elements, you could make a taut, stylish horror/thriller with no problem.  You could even go the original Dawn of the Dead route and use the location as a commentary on consumerism.  Or you could do what writer/director Frank Darabont did and do nothing of the sort.

Instead, we get insufferable, unbelievable characters.  I know, the script is based off a Stephen King short story, but that's no excuse.  Thomas Jane is the main character, and he is the best part of this movie; Jane stands out in his role as "the rational guy," if only because everyone else is poorly developed and makes bizarre choices.  Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden is god awful as the resident holier-than-thou Bible thumper.  Does this movie really need a uber-judgmental Puritan in the cast?  Wouldn't it have been better served with a more moderate character, like...I don't know...maybe a reasonable person with a strong religious faith?  I would have settled for a character that just didn't sound like a cartoon.  Instead, one of the main characters is completely unsympathetic, despite a (theoretically) sympathetic underlying motivation.  Andre Braugher, who can be excellent when given the right role, is another disappointment.  He plays a hot shot lawyer and is clearly the most intelligent person in the grocery store.  His character's skepticism and sense of persecution are on par with the most annoying JFK conspiracy theorists you can imagine ("The moon landing was just a cover-up for The Man to finally get rid of FrankenKennedy!"  Actually, that's a decent B-movie right there...).  William Sadler is rarely a good actor, but is normally inoffensive.  Here, he's annoying.  Laurie Holden is decent, but she doesn't have a whole lot to work with.  The only supporting actor that was a pleasant surprise was Toby Jones.  He wasn't great by any means, but it doesn't take much to be a breath of fresh air when the rest of the cast are stock characters from soap operas.  Here, he plays the short, wussy guy who happens to be a crack shot with a pistol.  That's actually kind of cool.  The rest of the supporting cast is poorly developed, but ranges all the way from redneck to hick.

The characters are bad, but the plot could make that unimportant (see: Independence Day).  It doesn't.  Instead, ridiculous characters do ridiculous things when monsters attack.  For the first fifteen minutes or so of the group's self-imposed quarantine inside the store, there is the reasonable debate that there might not be anything dangerous in the mist.  Okay, that makes sense.  Until people you know die in front of you, it could all seem like hysteria.  That is, until one of the store clerks is killed by a monster's spiked tentacles in the loading dock area.  There's a lot of blood afterward and Thomas Jane chopped a tentacle off with a fire axe.  Okay, so there's clear physical proof, so now everybody can get on the same page.  For reasons that are beyond rational thought, Andre Braugher's character refuses to look at the blood or tentacle, assuming that it is a trick.  In fact, only a handful of people take a look at the evidence.  Personally, I would want to see bloody mist-borne killer tentacle parts, but that's just me.

The group splinters after this scene.  Six or seven people stay reasonable (read: the mist is dangerous, so let's wait this one out), a few more choose to be skeptical about the monsters and make a run for it (bad idea) and the rest apparently become early apocalyptic Christians, led by Marcia Gay Harden.  I've got nothing against religion or the Planter's products that can come with it, but people going from normal to "it's-the-end-of-the-world-let's-sacrifice-a-child" in under 48 hours is a bit more than I can chew.  There's a smaller contingent that just commit suicide.  As the plot progresses, Thomas Jane and his friends confront threats from the mist and from their fellow townspeople and are forced to blah blah blah.  Do you really want the details?  You know they have to go out in the mist eventually.  The movie's called The Mist, after all, not Waiting Patiently For the Mist to Evaporate.

As the movie goes on, this movie's logic gets a little lost.  Thomas Jane and co. change their tactics as it suits them.  They want to stay in the grocery store, where it's relatively safe.  But, when someone is clearly going to die, they go out into the mist to reach the pharmacy next door.  Sure, it's heroic, but the tentacle monster should have been all over them, but wasn't.  Instead, the monsters switch types throughout the film.  First, it was spiked tentacles, then prehistoric-sized bugs and mini-pterodactyls, then big spiders and later mammoth sized monsters.  No one ever says the words "monster" or "dinosaur" in this film, though.  That is hard for me to believe.  There is no reason given for this evolution, if that's what it is.  The monsters could just be taking turns, for all we know.  I hate that the film makes a half-assed attempt to explain where these creatures come from (another dimension, FYI), but never tackles the issue of why they only get attacked by one monster type at a time.

I get the basic premise of this story.  Individuals are reasonable, but groups are irrational.  Or, if you like the story, you can argue that it is about the lengths that ordinary people will go to under extraordinary circumstances.  What.  Ev.  Er.  That doesn't excuse the carelessness of this plot/script.  Frank Darabont has done an excellent job adapting Stephen King's work for the screen before and has done a good job directing those same films (The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile), but here he comes up short.  You can blame the source material, but Darabont could have changed anything he wanted to.  To be more realistic, he could have had the townspeople spend a longer time in the grocery store.  All you need to do is put "Day 3" up on the screen, kill some people with giant spiders, and then fade to black for "Day 11," when some characters commit suicide.  I can buy that.  But the degree of hopelessness in this film in such a compressed period of time is disheartening.  On the bright side, I never cared about any characters, so there's no problem when they die.  So, you win some and you lose some.

The ending to the movie is a little controversial because it deviates from King's original short story.  It shouldn't be a problem for fans of King in general or the story in particular; King signed off on the new ending, adding that he wished he had thought of it first.  I won't give the ending away, but I will say this: if you watch the movie and are enjoying it, this ending will seriously upset you.  If, like me, you thought this movie could fertilize your garden, then the ending might elicit a chuckle.