SALT (2010): Lacking Peppa
August 21st 2010 09:45
Category: No Category
Blonde Angelina Jolie wielding a home-made bazooka in Salt (2010).
Angelina Jolie plays action-oriented CIA operative Evelyn Salt and gets to try different bad wigs and silly hats on, play with spiders, run away a lot (a looot, it gets tiresome), cross dress (unconvincingly) and throw some big guys around unattractive sets, kinda like Popeye. That last bit offers some, but only minimal, viewer satisfaction. One wishes one could throw some Hollywood execs around like that, that way the budget of this film, all alleged $110 million of it, could be better spent towards feeding a small African country instead. This is nowhere near the female James Bond unfortunately, as charm and humour are sorely missing from this thankfully high-paced albeit vacuous concoction - and even a drop of self-effacing irony which could make this film just slightly more palatable is regrettably just an unfulfilled glimmer of nostalgia in the critic's eye. Well, there is this one memorable scene of strangling, involving a staircase, a pair of handcuffs and a backbend - if you can take your eyes off the really bad wig, that is.
Angelina Jolie gives up in Salt (2010). For the record: Angelina looks so much better in dark hair (even if it's a bad wig), leave the hair alone already.
Agent Salt has a cute German husband (August Diehl) and even cuter terrier dog, briefly providing some heart to the storyline. Liev Schreiber pops up as Salt's CIA partner and Chiwetel Ejiofor as her counterintelligence nemesis. Both have little to do aside from furrowing their masculine brows and running after Angie. Veteran Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski manages to impress with his presence and composure as the mind control specialist and villain Vassily Orlov, but ultimately remains just another Pole stuck playing bit roles of Russians in American movies, mostly because casting directors are lazy, plus who's going to notice? The ever underestimated audience, for one.
The ludicrousness of plot is decidedly undeserving of a deeper look (describing it would spoil the delight of discovering its shallows in greater detail for yourself), let's just say, for some the Cold War seems to never have ended, and in a bout of plot-stretching at its worst, sleeper agents are now waking up to terrify America, yaaaawn. Perhaps I am reading it all wrong, and the movie is really a sophisticated metaphor about Hollywood terrifying the rest of the world with really bad movies in a subversive bid to turn everyone's grey cells into zombie matter...Here's the trailer for a salty beforetaste:
If you are up for an hour and a half of rather mindless time-killing sans thrills, enjoy Salt for what it's worth (mainly Angie's lips, duh). If interested in strong female characters in assassin mode and well-rounded, layered plotlines try oldies-but-goodies The Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis or Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita instead. Even digging up old episodes of Alias is a good option.
Review by Patricia Bieszk
© Copyright P. Bieszk 2010
| 99 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
