Sunday, July 25, 2010

Reviews from the Pad: Salt

Salt is one of those movies that feels like it's essentially a 2 hour TV Show Pilot. This makes sense if you consider it might as well be titled: "Chasing an Action Franchise- The Movie".

Driven relentlessly forward by back to back action sequences interspersed with flashbacks and just enough time to establish who the characters are, Salt largely succeeds at that not through storytelling (which is pretty rote and true to genre tropes), but through casting solid actors to pull off the roles. The thing is that the franchise created is essentially 24 mixed with the Manchurian Candidate staring Angelina Jolie in the Jack Shaw role; someone thrown into the middle of a conspiracy taking place in short order and finding themselves having to dig their way out.

It's hard to attack a lot of the rest of the film without stepping on story points so lets cut to some short points:
- The action is decent enough though most of the fights are shot in that quick cut closeup way that gained a lot of current favour with Bourne
- Jolie does an excellent job shifting through the emotional beats and chameleon nature of her character while the supporting cast does a solid job within the reality that there's very little given to them to do in comparison.
- The script is thin but it holds together well enough. The movie is basically an action sequence roller coaster though and it's deliberately open ended; by the end of you'll have a good idea who the characters are and where they fit in the universe but only the current "Bauer Day" is concluded and it's stated outright more are coming.

Overall though, it's a decent enough little spy thriller if that's what you're in the mood for.

PS: that's not a typo. I may be inferring something though....

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