Salt

"Salt" was directed by Phillip Noyce.  It stars Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and several other people who are far less familiar to the general public that the aforementioned actors.

Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt.  She works for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).  As it turns out she is accused of being a Russian spy.  Also, as it turns out she adamantly denies this. So she proceeds to go on the run, like only Angelina Jolie, or any other action movie star in the history of movies can.  Of course the fate of the United States is in some kind of peril and things are not as they originally appear.  They very rarely are, in case there was any shred of doubt out there.  Oh yeah the Russian president might be assassinated...just might.

It's true.  Angelina Jolie is an action star.  And a darn good one, at that, which works out great for "Salt" because she's running the show, hence her name being the only one on the movie poster.  For some reason people are under the impression that an action star needs to be a man, but that is a falsehood and Angelina has at least 4 different paychecks to prove it.  She is a great actress, and given decent material to work with can produce some great characters.  And for the record "Salt," when compared to "Wanted" is the better action movie by far.  Maybe I'm just not into bullets that curve and looms of destiny....Another thing that I would like to add into this paragraph: I want to thank Mr. Tom Cruise for not taking the lead role in "Salt" as originally planned.  After seeing Angelina Jolie as the lead I just cannot picture Tom Cruise as Evelyn Salt.  The wonderful other half of this blog wanted me to mention Liev Schreiber in this review, so I will because I told him I would and if I don't then I'm a liar.  Liev Schreiber is a good actor.  He worked well with Angelina Jolie in "Salt" and had some good lines.  I, however do not have many movies to judge him by.

The laws of science or anything..."Salt" is way too good for all of that.  All laws of science or logic in general are completely rejected in this movie and that's how things should be because this is in fact an action movie.  Salt at one point jumped from an overpass to a passing truck.  The whole jumping on top of a truck thing occurs a couple other times and her adrenaline is still pumping and is pretty unscathed when you consider what just happened.  They are several other scenes even more impressive than this, but I don't want to spoil everything.  And through it all Angelina Jolie still manages to look great.  Which is another level of impressive.

The cinematography as a whole was nothing too special.  There were a lot of close ups of people and of car chases, etc as well as some nice aerial shots of Washington DC and other locations.  At times however, it seemed like the camera was moving to fast through a scene and spinning out of control.

The score for "Salt" didn't really do much for me.  That is a generalization, I'm sure there were exceptions.  It came off as a little cliched action movie score, which is weird because James Newton Howard composed the score and he co-composed the score for "The Dark Knight."  Unless of course Hans Zimmer did the majority of the score for that movie and James Newton Howard just snuck his name on it.

The movie was well paced, which is basicly my way of saying that my ADD didn't kick in quite yet.  And in that time we get the pleasure of some semi-cheesy lines...but the movie as a whole is so entertaining you can ignore the uninspired lines of dialogue in parts.

I need to say this...Near the end of the movie I think I spied some horrible CGI (Computer Generated Imagry) of a plane.  It must have been...something horrible attacked my eyes for about two seconds.

After the filming of the last scene wrapped up production I'm assuming Phillip Noyce, at the top of his lungs, so everyone in the vicinity could hear, yelled "Sequel!"  This is purely speculation and not fact, from a reliable source like People Magazine...don't judge.

So basically I thought this was a good movie vehicle for Angelina Jolie and I was thoroughly entertained for slightly over an hour and a half.  There's action, there's twists, and probably most importantly the lady who's face is on the poster.  If you like her or action movies in general, then by all means see it.  But be frugal, because we are in a recession.  Although I guess Regal Cinemas doesn't believe that since they are continuing to boost their ticket prices up each year.  Not award-winning material...obviously...but yeah...just watch it...it'll be at the very least fun.  2 and half stars out of 4

-Joseph Sbrilli