Salt

Salt is one of those movies that for me from the first minute I saw the trailer I was excited to see because it was action movie that immediately perked the movie bone in my body. Salt ended up being an edge of your seat spy thriller that will have you trying to figure out all the twists and turns throughout the entire movie. The concept of the story revolves around an agent who is accused of being a traitor by a Russian defector that will assassinate the president in the near future. From that moment on the audience is taken on a joy ride that never stops. 

Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt and does a great job in the main lead and is truly able to play the action star with great strength. Jolie's success in this position shows the star power that possesses because initially the script was written for agent Salt to be a male actor, but they decided to change the role to a female lead because of the carrying power that Jolie has for movies. Jolie plays the part so perfectly that the audience is stuck trying to figure out if Salt is truly an agent for the U.S. or a Russian mole that was placed in the States after being brainwashed as a child. Playing agent Winter is Liev Schreiber. While most may only recognize Schreiber for his role in the X-men Origins: Wolverine movie, Schreiber definitely shows off a lot of ability and I can see that moving forward we will see him get more parts. Schreiber plays his role perfectly as the audience feels the conflict he feels within himself as he tries to hunt down and bring in his partner Salt, all while hoping that she is not this traitor she is accused of being. The rest of the supporting cast ends up being fine in their roles, but in the end they are all pretty forgettable.

The supporting cast being forgettable though truly works because in essence this film is truly a cat and mouse game between agent Salt and agent Winter, as Salt tries to figure out who she is while still staying a step ahead of Winter from catching her. The essential plot I think is quite compelling, and I don't want to give too much away but only to say that nothing is at it seems until the very end. The story is exactly what you need in a great spy action thriller. The key for the success with this story was the great ability for the story to throw you completely upside down each time you think you have the story and plot figured out. Normally a movie that has this many plot twists can be very annoying and can really take away from the movie. However, with Salt I think the twists made the movie unpredictable in a way that it really added to the movie in the end. This movie really in the end makes you think and with the twists makes you wonder who really is Salt?

To go along with the acting  and the strong story/plot with all its twists are the strong action sequences. The action gelled very nicely within the story, which a lot of times in movies like this everything feels disjointed in it goes telling the story then loses all momentum  in moving to the action sequences. The thing also that I liked is with a female lead is that the action and stunt work seems to have a little more fluid and finesse which was a refreshing change. Had Salt had a male lead like was originally planned the action would have had a more brute force strength to it. With Jolie in the role she was able to have a finesse feeling at times but at the same time she could follow that up with a show of sheer strength to basically kick the crap out of an adversary.

Salt is a great edge of your seat action spy thriller. I greatly enjoyed Salt from start to finish. Jolie simply showed why she is the star she is today and I will admit she is a lot easier on the eyes to watch then any male star they could have put in the role. For the great enjoyment and entertainment Salt provided I am giving it three and a quarter buckets of popcorn out of five. This is definitely one that I wish I would have seen on the big screen in the theater, it is though a movie that I will definitely be adding to the movie collection at some time.

-The Movie Man