Review of Salt (2010) by Chads. — 26 Jul 2010

With all due respect to James Bond, Evelyn Salt(Angelina Jolie) does it better, at least since, incidentally, Lewis Gilbert's "The Spy Who Loved Me", made in 1977, when the Cold War was still cold; when the Russians, by far, made the best villains.

For those who can remember, "Salt" makes you nostalgic for the days when the ABC telefilm "The Day After" scared you silly. The "evil empire"(Ronald Reagan's words) was good for the action-thriller genre.

Islamic fundamentalism? Not so much. The Arabic language, and more importantly, the Arabic accent, have little or no entertainment value, no camp kick(i.e. Nazi Germany), at all. That's why Jonathan Demme's retooling of John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate" will never work on the level of escapism, even if the United States someday makes peace with the Muslim world.

Russians are more fun: that's the masterstroke of "Salt". The Russians still have active sleeper agents; the Russians still hate our guts(who knew?), a whopping nineteen years after the Soviet Union dissolved following the signing of the Belavezha Accords.

For clarity's sake, the expository scenes that show the Russian children's training could have been more explicit in naming names. "Salt" never makes mention of that magic acronym(the U.

S.S.R.), even though Orlov(Daniel Olbrychski) is a communist hardliner who still pledges allegiance to the hammer and sickle. The old school commie, a colleague of Brezhnev, is no doubt bitter about losing the Cold War, so "Salt" should have followed through with its bizarre retro choice in antagonists and made "Day X" less convoluted day of reckoning against the United States by being more pointed in their motivation.

This splinter group, who as children resented Mikahl Gorbachev's employment of Glasnost to draw back the Iron Curtain, hates Americans every bit as much as the Muslims. That's the note that the filmmaker should have expounded on.

Lest we forget, as an afterthought, "Salt" makes room for our current enemy when the final stage of "Day X" is revealed; that's when "Salt" becomes certifiably loony.

But then, Jolie, in a scene reminiscent of Jack Ruby gunning down Lee Harvey Oswald in cold blood on live TV, reins in the overplotting with the sheer force of her presence, proving that it's she, and not Bond, or Bourne, who is the best.

(Apologies to Carly Simon.) "Salt" is an inspired popcorn flick.