Salt

REVIEW: Salt IMDB

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MOVIE INFO

• Producer -
• Director - Phillip Noyce
• Primary Actors:
  • Angelina Jolie - Evelyn Salt
  • Liev Shreiber - Ted Winter
  • Daniel Olbrychski - Vassily Orlov
  • Chiwetel Ejiofor - Peabody

INTRO STUFF

• CHUCK
  • Website...a little boring otherwise
• MIKE
  • Feast/Famine at work, Top Gear Marathon, Alpha Protocol

SYNOPSIS

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  • In a world where remnants of the cold war still remain, one woman must confront her past and decide where her loyalties lie...

WALKING IN F&T (FEARS & THOUGHTS)

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    • CHUCK
      • It is a 'filler' movie because nothing else was worthy to watch - probably won't be that impressive.
    • MIKE
      • Bad Buzz, late in the season, and different trailers make for a potential crap-fgest

FIRST ACT

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    • North Korea - tortured
      • Interesting opening act, grabbed my attention much better than I was expecting
      • We meet the 'husband' - we later find out he's a German arachnologist, how did he have 'power' to get an exchange? Ted Winter (Liev Shrieber) states how she was worth more (hope the Koreans aren't listening to your conversation as you are leaving their facility...), but then mentions her husband as being the motivating reason.
      • I kept thinking of the last of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, the whole North Korean torture sequence...

...LATER SCENES

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    • In walks Vassily Orlov
      • His story almost seemed a little fantasy like, almost felt like I was watching Harry Potter
      • He couldn't have just called her? Seemed like a lot of trouble for nothing. - Agreed!
      • Interrogation scene was actually interesting, maybe best thing in the movie...what was the significance of the cigarettes???
    • She runs
      • She tells Ted Winter to call her when they find her husband, but then immediately breaks her SIM card on her phone in the taxi, I guess that she assumed that he was already taken...
      • Goes home - Steals the spider (a big hint for later events - they showed too much of the spider handling, I guessed what happened immediately and was not surprised later) - Nico and whats-her-name on Lost, Season 2...
      • Tazer Accellerator...a little too much...he could have moved his foot when not being tazed...
      • Using the person as a silencer to shoot another...about the only thing creative in this movie is how she takes down so many people non-lethally...which Bourne did a heck of a lot better...
      • Good cop/bad cop - Ted and Peabody; roles are always opposite and then they reverse
      • Jumps from a bridge to a moving semi - she would have rolled right off unless she used her super spidey-web feet
      • These sequences felt like 24 at its worse...non lethal takedowns, faux-gritty...
    • Meets up with Vassily Orlov
      • Because of the spider I knew what was going to happen - booo
      • They shoot her husband after she carried out their great mission to test her? Dumb, she already passed their test by taking out the Russian
      • The music writer totally stole Terminator's 'dah-dah dah dah-dah' theme song on her grenade rampage
      • This is where the plot really flew out the window..now that the cell is dead, why not turn herself in, nothing else to live for...husband is dead...
      • I am guessing when Salt was a guy, the girlfriend/wife was not killed in cold blood...
    • Next Mission - White House
      • a ride on a Piaggio Avanti - very nice Italian pusher prop airplane
      • Okay so she wipes out her whole cell without batting an eye, and is not getting all ooey-gooey over this one dude?!?
      • Suicide bomber - dumb, doesn't fit any of the previous Russian methods. They just threw this in here to somehow make them look like terrorists, but this isn't how Russian spies work. Why train someone all of their life to just have them 'go crazy' for 2 minutes and then blow themselves up? Dumb dumb dumb.
      • Jumping in the elevator - kind of X-men like
      • Ted and Evelyn fight - you could tell they were trying very hard not to show how easy it would have been for Liev to knock out poor tiny Angelina. He's a big guy and this is another scene of dumbness to me where they try to show girls do what they just aren't physically capable of. Toothpick girls everywhere will now try to take on a guy twice their size and soon realize their mistake.
      • Inventive method to get to the door panel - shoot the concrete on the reverse side. Thankfully they have their Star Trek door panel there for her to access.
    • Helicopter ride - over the Potomic River
      • What an awkward interrogation scene, horrible editing or something.
      • End was right out of the beginning of No Way Out...

RANDOM THOUGHTS

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    • The story - no Cold War anymore, but it still exciting so let's invent a way to bring the Cold War back! Maybe McGuyver will follow suit.
    • I really like spy movies, but this was just not good...and this director did the Harrison Ford Tom Clancy movies...not sure what went wrong...

...THE ACTORS

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    • Angelina Jolie - Evelyn Salt
      • Didn't like how her persona changed throughout the movie - I know it was supposed to show her 'spy nature', but it never transitioned back to where she started...
      • I never really knew what she was thinking, but I don't think the scrip did either...
    • t - Ted Winter
      • Starting to like this guy more and more as an actor, great job
      • A good actor who is in a lot of bad movies...bad luck???
    • Daniel Olbrychski - Vassily Orlov
      • He fit the part, great casting
    • Chiwetel Ejiofor - Peabody
      • Remembered him from 2012, did alright here, but nothing ground breaking.
      • The Agent...nuff' said.

QUESTIONS:

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    • Why continue this series?! She took out their headquarters and evil king pin already and we know that she can't identify all of the 'classes' because she couldn't identify Ted.
    • What was this script like when Salt was a guy...
    • What was Salt thinking? What was her through-line as a character...because I never really knew what was going on in her head, but I never thought for a single second that she was under Russian (Soviet) control...
    • How did water-boarding from some bored North Koreans break the "Unbreakable" conditioning?

THE MACGUFFIN:

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    • The cigarettes...
    • The Hollywood Exec, that green-lit this piece of garbage...
    • The KA Program

Sponsorships

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    • Pepsi billboard in the beginning
    • Piaggio - super sweet turbo prop private plane
    • Blackberry

Quote of the movie

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    • Germans don't joke...(or something like that)

CLOSING THOUGHTS

CHUCK Rating: 2.5

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    • Positives
      • Better than I expected, a fun story to follow (Cold War is still interesting), and some good acting now and then - loved the Piaggio.
    • Negatives
      • A few inconsistencies, they copied the Terminator music, lots of plot holes, they gave away the whole story too quickly (the spider), and why are they leaving this story open? It is not interesting anymore. Maybe they are taking lessons from the Bourne series.

MIKE Rating: 1.5

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    • Positives
      • Initial Scene with Orlov...the kill the husband
    • Negatives
      • Everything else. Everything bad from Tom Clancy, 24, MacGuyver, Bourne, and every other PG-13 crapola out there...