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Angelina Jolie goes Jane Bond in the action thriller “Salt.” |
When Angelina Jolie reportedly said she’d like to make a female James Bond movie, she probably meant something like the cutting-edge 007 series reboot “Casino Royale.”
Instead, “Salt” is closer to “Quantum of Solace,” the most recent Bond thriller riddled with standard-issue action movie conventions – preposterous stretches of common sense, over-the-top stunts, inane dialogue and supposedly trained gunmen who can’t hit squat with machine guns.
Jolie may not exactly be in Jason Bourne’s league, but she holds her own in a role that requires much more motion than emoting.
“Salt” originally came with the prerequisite male action hero named Edwin A. Salt (a-sault, get it?) with Tom Cruise up for the role. When Jolie entered the project (reportedly after turning down an offer to be a Bond girl), Edwin became Evelyn Salt, a blonde CIA operative with a will of steel, one tough cookie who refuses to crumble.
We witness that in the opening sequence when she’s tortured by North Korean interrogators who strip her down to her modest, PG-13 essentials and mercilessly beat her. But she doesn’t break.
Freed during a prisoner exchange, Salt marries a nerdy spider expert named Mike Krause (August Diehl) and goes about her CIA desk job under Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), a tough, by-the-book kind of guy who has an obvious soft spot for Salt.
“Utilitarian is the new sexy,” he tells Salt, who has no idea she’s about to prove him right. (Read more…)