Movie Review: Salt

LITTLE ROCK — Normally I’d get a little time to think about Salt.

That would be bad.

So maybe the studio (Columbia) knew what they were doing when they booked the screening the Tuesday night before the film opened, which means I’m writing this (under intense deadline pressure) moments after watching the insane thing.

And by insane, I mean totally nuts. Tom Cruise on Oprah’s couch, Dan Gilbert on LeBron James nuts. Which is sort of a good thing, I think, and certainly an unexpected thing given the movie is directed by the normally responsible Phillip Noyce, who is usually the epitome of measured good taste. While it’s not my job to keep up with Noyce (wait, maybe it is), his last spy film was The Quiet American, which is far more representative of his admittedly wide-ranging oeuvre.

But then, this is an Angelina Jolie star vehicle. Which means Noyce’s job is similar to that of a fashion designer like, say, Carolina Herrera: he need only make Jolie look fabulous, not plausible. Every nick and scratch on the stretched canvas of her face, every cut of her curious pneumatic, pulpy lips, must look heroically chic. Every jump edit and slow pan must reveal the leonine athleticism of our lithe little heroine. Such are the demands of this kind of high concept, high art image-making.

Salt is fun, and you probably know as much about the plot - which I won’t spoil for you because I can’t (and I mean I literally can’t, for, though I think I have the lines of allegiance sussed out, I’m not about to bet my credibility on a half-baked plot synopsis) - from the ubiquitous trailer as you probably need to know. But in case you don’t watch TV (and good for you if you don’t) then Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is a CIA agent who is suspected of being a Russian spy. She runs to clear her name. I think.

And while a few weeks ago, the premise of a Russian sleeper agent might have seen quaintly Cold War, recent events have conspired to make the concept topical, if not exactly creditable. But who cares, this is a spy movie with lots of chasing and shooting and the creative maiming of human beings (though, spoiler alert, pay attention to which side is hurt mostly in nonlethal ways as opposed to which side gets the old vodka bottle in the jugular treatment).

But I kid Salt mostly ’cause I like it, more than I maybe should, because it’s the kind of movie I remember they used to make. You could get snarky and call it sub-Bourne, or drive a grand cru metaphor through its plot holes, but you gotta love a movie that so wholeheartedly embraces the inherent artifice of the medium. Nothing in Salt is the way it is on our planet.

It seems obligatory that I mention that the script - assuming this thing had a script and the fine actors involved (spoiler alert: Liev Schreiber is in it) weren’t simply making it up as they went along - was originally conceived with Tom Cruise in mind for the lead. That it was so easily transposed into the key of Jolie seems surprising to some, though to be honest there are probably only two people in the world who could have made anything this bizarre and this entertaining. Jolie is one of them. And she used to be married to the other one.

I think I’m done now. I’ll probably regret this in the morning. Good night. And spokoynoy nochi, malyshi!