Salt Review

When a mysterious Russian man comes into the offices of the CIA claiming to have information on a future assassination attempt of the Russian president, Evelyn Salt, who is pre-occupied with the thought of her anniversary dinner with her husband, dismisses the claims as false. That is, however, until she is accused of being the assassin. When the CIA's computer shows that the Russian man is not lying, Salt is forced to run, escaping from the CIA and proving her innocence.

When I think action film with a female lead, my mind immediately pictures Angelina Jolie. Jolie's roles in Mr & Mrs Smith and the iconic Tomb Raider make her almost synonymous with the phrase female action star. Her past experience in playing the heroine, or anti-heroine in this case, means that she handled the role of Salt with ease, making incredibly complex action scenes look like a walk in the park and handling a gun with as much confidence as any competitor on screen. If there was going to be a gender-swapped remake of James Bond, Angelina Jolie would be the only valid choice to play the role, and it is with her natural talent of playing the female action hero that makes her journey in this film so enjoyable to watch.

With tension being built in the typical action-film way, quick cuts and fast cars, the film does not break any boundaries cinematically, it ticks every box it needs to in order to be a thrilling spectacle but who says it needs to go the extra mile? Every box that needs to be ticked is ticked, and through the lack of focus on being innovative and uniquely stylised, the focus is put on the extremely strong script, the constant plot twists and the fun chase scenes.
With the most exciting chase scene happening relatively close to the beginning of the film, however, a bit of the excitement is lost. We see Jolie hopping from truck to truck on a speeding motorway, the CIA are on the upcoming bridge, aiming their guns and getting ready to fire, but deep down we know that realistically the female lead who is glorified in all of the film's marketing campaigns is not going to die ten minutes in. Aside from the fact that the outcome of the chase is known as soon as the first step is taken, the chase scene is wonderfully shot, with pauses for the audience to catch their breaths before being thrown back into the chase quite unexpectedly sometimes.

Salt is an extremely easy watch, one of the things I found most enjoyable about it was the length. With most action films, there seems to be ten or twenty minutes at the end of useless footage, almost distinguishing our flame of excitement with quite dull scenes giving closure for the sake of giving closure. In this film (spoiler alert) we are left with Jolie jumping out of a helicopter and running through a forest of sorts, out for vengeance on the group who killed her husband and took everything away from her. This leaves the possibility for the audience to consider the character and her actions, make a judgement on her future and also for the filmmakers to make a sequel, which has been announced, by the way, and will most probably be awesome, like it's prequel.