After reading the hype about SALT (especially how the recent Russian spy discoveries and swap occurred close to the film's release--though the central "deep cover" Russian spy gimmick is swiped from Don Siegel's 1977 TELEFON with Charles Bronson, Lee Remick and Tyne Daly), I expected reasonably choice summer action fare--particularly with this being director Phillip Noyce's (with a career ranging from the Australian classic NEWSFRONT to two good-to-very-good Jack Ryan films to the more recent Australian classic RABBIT-PROOF FENCE) return to big-budget American filmmaking.
Unfortunately, SALT is little more than 95 minutes of chase and shoot (with some violence that almost punches a fist through the balsa wood of the PG-13 rating), with occasional character beats/backstory to keep it from being completely tissue-thin.
And it doesn't help that SALT was released a week after the summer's tie-for-best-with-TOY STORY 3-film INCEPTION.
I hope that Angelina Jolie carries on with a viable A-list film career regardless of all the tabloid chatter. It may be time for her to again opt for a studio-boutique project for her to excel in (like 2008's unjustly ignored A MIGHTY HEART) instead of listening to what's likely to be renewed siren calls from Universal for her to appear in WANTED 2.
[Train-wreck alert: Sony/Columbia has tagged the trailer for Michel Gondry's THE GREEN HORNET to SALT. And it's fairly obvious that Gondry and star Seth Rogen had only a thirty-second meeting of minds; Rogen and Sony must have been imagining a GHOSTBUSTERS approach to the subject matter, but it looks like a sequel to the superself-indulgent Bruce Willis early-90s caper comedy film HUDSON HAWK instead.]
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