Movie Review: Salt (2010)

Holy taser driving, infiltrationing craziness Batman!! I apologize in advance for this post being full of exclamation points and seemingly drug induced excitement, however this is me coming off of an adrenaline rush after going through the freakin’ awesomely amazing SALT. Oh yea, there’s going to be a lot of ‘awesome’s and gratuitous use of expletives throughout this as well… so don’t read with your kids. (Does anyone actually read BLOGs with their kids?)

Rating: 3 Out Of 5 Stars

So a lot of marketing, some hype, but I hadn’t heard much else about SALT prior to watching it. I don’t count accounts of friends and family as legitimate critique, more a general feeler of how a movie was perceived by my social circle. Sorry guys. But that’s actually why I was more taken aback considering I hadn’t heard too much about this. I mean there was more buzz for Liam Neeson’s TAKEN than this one. But holy sugar pastries was this cool. I’m not even a big fan of Angelina Jolie—and I should clarify that I mean her acting, not her social work since some people can’t even recall her work prior to ‘Brangelina’—however I have to admit this was pretty freakin’ cool.

Allow me to calm myself. SALT was actually a pretty original action based thriller that keeps you guessing till the very end. I don’t mean that as a cliché, you quite literally have no clue as to the main characters motives until the very end few minutes of the movie. However that confusion and over all ‘ WTF’ feelings are kept at bay with the overwhelming action and fast paced storytelling of this film. The hook of the film gets you right away as you witness a writhing, blood soaked Jolie, screaming and pleading her innocence as she’s being tortured by North Korean interrogators. The story of the betrayal of a CIA agent and her pursuit is basically the premise of the movie, but with a lot more going on in the background. Not that the movies perfect in any ways.

A very unique actioner that will definitely keep one entertained if nothing else. There are issues of course. There’s some cheese sprinkled in towards the end, the action scenes—if one choose to take it that way—are a little over the top and ‘unrealistic’ as some may say. I have some complaints, like some Parkour styled wall scaling in the elevator to the President’s bunker sequence would’ve been nice, instead of the cheesy wirework that it ended up looking like. Some of the narration and dialogue is typical ‘catch the fugitive’ styled nonsense. Liev Shreiber is awesome as always and who doesn’t love Chiewetel Ejiofor as the side cop. He’s becoming one of my favourite side cops in the talkies.

If nothing else interested you in watching SALT, how’s this: Jolie’s character escapes police custody by tasering the driver of the cop car from the back seat, slams his head into the steering wheel… then uses it to steer as she tases him repeatedly causing his leg to clench and push down hard on the accelerator whenever she wanted him to accelerate. She basically made herself a taser puppet out of that cop. Electrifyingly awesome, I think so. SALT is a mindless entertainer that you sit and watch and enjoy the crap out of and then forget… unless of course you’re writing a BLOG post about it.

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