Review: Salt

The only real thing I knew about Salt going into watch it was that the part was originally written for Tom Cruise who obviously chose to do Knight and Day over this. Angelina Jolie took over from Cruise in what may be the first ever case of gender swap re-casting, this is made even stranger by the fact that Ange has to cross-dress at one point which made me wonder if we would have had a Some Like it Hot moment had Cruise taken the part. Jolie has played action before in both Mr and Mrs Smith and Wanted but here Evelyn Salt is much of a more professional sort to the point of almost being cold. Salt is a CIA agent who had been kidnapped at the start of the film and only freed thanks to husband Mark. Soonafter the film's start Salt is accused of being a Russian agent who is tasked with killing the Russian President at the funeral of the U.S. Vice President. Salt denies this but is soon rushing off, dying her hair, jumping around a lot and shooting a lot of people.

Salt is an interesting film, in one way it is a lot more accomplished than a lot of this year's summer blockbusters in having a fairly simple but effective story drive along the action rather than some nonsense about ever-lasting lightbulbs or fake bank notes. In the lead Jolie tries to keep the audience guessing till the final reel it is a very measured performance which never slips into the ridiculous, apart from maybe the cross-dressing, and always engages. The two main support performances are also well done as the producers decided to cast some proper actors in Liev Schrieber and Chiewetel Ejiofor as her long-time friend and colleague and a suspiciouis agent respetively. The main problem I had with Salt is that it takes itself a little too seriously at times and thinks its a little more clever than it actually is. The two supposed plot twists were figured out by myself and my friend way before they were revealed and there were also some unexplainable moments throughout the film. Overall a fairly enjoyable actioner which is professionally executed but not as cleverly-plotted as it likes to think.