Review: Salt

Grade: B

Evelyn Salt is a happily married woman who works for an oil company and is getting ready to celebrate her anniversary with her husband. In all actuality, she works for the CIA and is a spy. One day, a Russian spy walks through their doors announcing that he is defecting. Salt is put in charge of interrogating him. The Russian, Orlov, tells her that years ago, during the cold war, Russia came up with a plan to raise and train a bunch of children to be spies that will pass as American citizens who will be activated one day to bring down America. He then goes on to tell her that she was one of those children and is a Russian spy. The CIA then goes on lockdown but Salt escapes, determined to find her husband and make sure that he is ok. After she escapes, she begins to unravel more and more of this mystery finding that it goes farther than she imagined and goes deeper than anyone thought possible.

Angelina Jolie (Changeling, Beowulf) seems to have an affinity for action/spy/assassin type roles. She was great in movies like Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith so I had hope for this movie. She did a pretty good job with this movie and was definitely the most enjoyable part of the movie. Unfortunately though, the writing doesn’t hold strong through the whole movie. The first half of the movie is great. All of the scenes involving Salt escaping from, then running from, the CIA are great and a lot of fun to watch and Jolie handles it all very well. Unfortunately, around half way through the movie, something seems to change in the movie and it kind of takes a turn for the worse. While some of the action stays pretty good and Jolie kicks some serious butt, the story gets a little weird and kind of ridiculous at points. It also gets a little predictable towards the end.

Live Schreiber (Repo Men, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) plays Ted Winter, a higher up in the CIA. Winter is a friend of Salt’s and tries to defend her when she is first accused. I really enjoy Schreiber’s acting and he does a pretty good job with this movie. Chiwetel Ejiofor (2012, Serenity) plays Agent Peabody. Peabody doesn’t trust Salt at first, especially when she runs, but as the movie progresses, and in all honesty things start to look worse for Salt, he begins to doubt his convictions and begins to believe maybe Salt is right. Chiwetel did a great job with this role as he does with all of his roles, and was really enjoyable.

This movie was definitely enjoyable but I was hoping it would have been better. If you like spy action movies with lots of twists in them, check out Salt, it is worth it. Even though the second half isn’t quite as good as the first, it is still all pretty enjoyable. I might have to check out this movie a second time to get a more solid reading on it. Unfortunately, it is hard to discuss this movie because there are some pretty big plot twists I don't want to give away about 30 or so minutes in.