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

2012

Director Roland Emmerich hates buildings.  I know what you're thinking.  "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Brian...Just because the guy directed 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, and Independence Day doesn't mean he hates buildings.  Maybe he just likes to direct insultingly stupid special effects movies."  Well, then, riddle me this: if he doesn't hate buildings, why did he write the screenplay for all those films?  Check and mate, Mr. Argumentative-voice-that-I-hear-in-my-head-as-I-type-this.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's get to the movie.  Well, not so fast...did you see the poster?  The movie poster for the film has "We Were Warned" as a tag line.  Warned?  By who?  Okay, the movie is named 2012, and there is the famous Mayan Long Count calendar that starts with the date August 11, 3114 BC and ends with December 21, 2012 AD, so I'll assume that the Mayans warned us.  I have to assume this, because the movie only casually alludes to the Mayans a couple of times, never giving an in depth connection of how they knew the Mayans were warning us.  Alright, let's make that assumption.  What did they warn us about?  Presumably, since this is a disaster movie, the end of the world.  I'm not about to debate the merits of that idea (Well, maybe just for a second...my calendar ends on December 31, 2010.  Does that mean we all die on New Year's Eve?), but let's just assume that end of their calendar equals disaster.  The tag line implies that we are responsible, though.  "We Were Warned."  What?  "Don't let time continue in a linear fashion past December 20, 2012, or you'll be sorrrrrrryyyyyy!"  You'd think this preordained global event would tie in to nuclear war or global warming or dinosaur-killing asteroids, but no, not this film.  The earth just decides to go for humanity's jugular.  There are a lot of earthquakes, tidal waves (same idea, I know), and typhoons.  No tornadoes, oddly enough.  But "We Were Warned" that nothing humans did had any effect on the planet, and we were all just living on borrowed time.  We took out a loan from Mother Nature, and she's coming to collect on 12/21/2012...with interest!

Dear marketing team for 2012, I hate you so much.  Sincerely, Brian.

This movie could have also been titled "John Cusack: Faster Than Nature."  On four separate occasions, Cusack is being chased by a force of nature (an earthquake, volcano fumes twice, and a tidal wave) that tends to travel faster than a person, but apparently not John Cusack.  Don't get me wrong, I like John Cusack, but the man doesn't like being in good movies any more.  I also believe that, no matter how good a driver you are, you cannot drive a limousine through an office building that is falling down without crashing.  That's just my opinion, but I dare you to prove me wrong.


The plot to this masterpiece is pretty bare bones: the token scientist that everybody listens to (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) realizes that the world is going to end.  He and his friends have even calculated how much time we have left.  He tells the government, the government listens, and the governments of the world agree to secretly prepare some way to survive.  That's the plot. 

Reading that, you'd think this movie was 45 minutes long, but it clocks in at over two-and-a-half hours.  How do you fill all that extra time?  Well, Roland has the tried and true method of having one or two main characters, and the disaster happens, and it impacts the main characters and their loved ones.  In Independence Day, it was Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum; in The Day After Tomorrow, it was Dennis Quaid; in Godzilla, it was...um, I remember rooting for Godzilla, so she must have been the main character.  In 2012, the main characters are Ejiofor and Cusack.  How does that work out for their loved ones?  Let's see...Ejiofor fails to save his family or any of his friends, while Cusack's estranged family almost makes it through the film unscathed until his beloved replacement as husband and father (seriously, they really liked this guy) dies at the very end.  Don't feel bad for them; they just have Cusack fill in the newly vacant position.

The main idea in the film is the optimistic notion that, when all the chips are down, people are inherently good and will try to help each other because it is the right thing to do.  John Cusack's character wrote a (not terribly successful) book with that as its theme, and Ejiofor is reading the book.  The natural disasters occurring represent the tough times, and now it's time for humanity to save itself with its inherent goodness.  That's not a bad theme.  I don't necessarily disagree with it, either.  But every movie needs a villain, and in this movie it is Oliver Platt.  And nature, but nature has no dialogue.  Oliver Platt is the government guy who is trying to save the few thousand people he can in the time that Ejiofor gives him.  But Ejiofor's estimates are wrong every time (making him the worst movie scientist ever), which forces Platt's character to act aggressively to get the survival mission off the ground.  Don't get me wrong, Platt is a jerk in this film, but he's a logical jerk.  He does not try to save his 89 year-old mother because she's old and they will have to rebuild society if they survive; he allows rich people (instead of smart or genetically superior people) to pay billions of Euros for spots on the survival ships because the survival ships cost billions to make; when one of the survival ships can't be used, Platt chooses to not let them on board his ship because the final killer tidal wave will arrive in five minutes.  Is he a nice guy?  No, but his actions are understandable.  But Ejiofor has to make a swinging-for-the-fences-and-striking-out speech about how, if humanity is going to survive, it can't let go of its goodness, its...humanity.  And everyone but Platt totally agreed with him.  What?  Really?  Nobody says, "Let's try and get past this first extinction-level threat and then we can start being nice?"  Man, I must be ripe with villainy to think like that.

So how are the actors?  Well, the star of the show, Special Effects, was okay.  Buildings got destroyed.  Water rose.  Whatever.  Cusack was fine, but he needs a new agent.  Ejiofor was less good, but is generally a solid actor, so I'll give him a pass this time.  Cusack's son could be out-acted by lukewarm yogurt.  Amanda Peet and Thandie Newton are women; that's all the script really says about them.  Danny Glover looked really tired as the most depressing President of the United States ever...he's basically the anti-Bill Pullman in Independence Day; where Pullman had everyone fight back against annihilation, Glover just said "I quit, time to die."  Woody Harrelson plays a convincing crazy dirty hippie (he actually reminded me of my uncle in Montana, if my uncle was absolutely poo-flinging crazy), but it's still not a good role.  George Segal is in the movie for reasons that are never revealed.  There are some characters from China and India, too, but you're not supposed to care about them.

Really, that's the problem with this movie.  It spends so much time and effort (and did I mention time?) trying to make this feel epic, it has no room left for the characters.  And there are so many characters that just serve as cannon fodder to show how deadly the end of the world can be.  "Epic" means something with huge scope, but it always comes back to the characters.  Or, it's supposed to.

I give this film two stars for the effects, two stars for Cusack's charm, one star for Danny Glover not saying "I'm too old for this shit," and one star for killing George Segal, but I take away three stars for royally pissing me off.