SALT Review

"Today a Russian agent will travel to New York to kill the president..." - Orlov to Evelyn Salt

And also today a half American/half Polynesian will travel to Stadium Cinemas and have 2 hours of his life stolen from him.

Salt. The dinner table staple. The golden standard of food seasoning. The better half of pepper. Yes salt as you know it...should be angry. Because tonight Phillip Noyce and Angelina Jolie have ruined the good name of salt everywhere with their action/spy hack job 'SALT'.

The lead up to this movie was good. The trailers introduced a possible new twist on the already flooded spy movie market when they teased us with an accusation thrown pointedly at an American agent...claiming that she was in fact a traitorous Russian operative. Well, I hope y'all enjoyed that moment in the trailers because the movie is a lack-luster throw-together that is so painfully predictable that you almost don't want your predictions to be right during the film.

What promised to be an action packed spy movie turned out to be a series of long chase scenes that dragged on too long coupled with sequences of Jolie besting 30 agents at a time with her bare hands in fight scenes that we've seen way too many times. I wish she'd have stabbed me in the neck with a broken bottle (spoiler alert!) instead of granting Orlov a sweet release from a movie that was going nowhere fast.

Unlike great spy movies like the 'Bourne' series and 'Mission Impossible 1 & 3', there were no clever twists or well laid out plans. Intensity was a no-show as agent Salt easily (like ridiculously easy) dispatched other "agents" (incopetent as they were portrayed I don't know if we should call them that) using fly-wire acrobatics and inhuman strength. As if we haven't seen a million movies with a 'car chasing motorcycle' scene, they threw one in. Albeit one of the most boring chase scenes ever. In one scene all Salt does is climb out the window to escape a posse of trained agents...and she escapes. Another time she jumps onto the back of not one, not two, but THREE semis in one single chase sequence; each time right at the moment she would have been captured.

Seriously though, worse than all that was the apparent love between Salt and her husband Krauss. A love that is portrayed by several flashback scenes throughout the movie. The scenes are super saturated in color and there is NO chemistry between the two. (spoiler) It's so bad in fact that you couldn't care less when she watches him get shot by her Russian buddies. The emotional elements are so forced they make you wanna puke.

Bad action, poor acting (the interrogation scene is sooooo lame), predictable plot, more predictable ending, lousy chemistry, and lame music score = Biggest Disappointment of the Summer. If you're expecting a 'Bourne' or 'MI:3' don't see this movie. If you love Steven Segal movies this one's for you ;).

Running Time: 100 mins longer than you wanna watch
Genre: Action, Thriller

Overall Rating: 21/100 stars... explosions account for 15 stars methinks.

"Then YOU are a Russian Spy." - Orlov to Salt