Action: Salt
Salt
Year: 2010
Score: 7.8
Bottom Line: Try it - you'll like it!
The most significant thing to say about this movie is that it would have been terrible if Tom Cruise had starred in it as originally planned. Because he's good at being a pop icon and worked well in his youth for things like Top Gun and Days of Thunder (both Jerry Bruckheimer movies). But if you want something that has any emotional weight you don't call him. And this movie needed emotional weight.
As you know from the previews, Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy. She insists she's innocent and goes on the run. What follows actually has the substance of a Bourne film, political intrigue and fights that are deeply personal in nature; emotional rather than strictly for survival. Plus, like Bourne, Salt is a little bit MacGuyver, having to be ingenious in finding ways out of the places she finds herself in.
All of the performances are good. Action sequences are decent (the first car chase does go one about 2 trucks too long). THe hand to hand sequences are my favorite and there are enough of those well done enough for my taste.
This movie definitely has an emotional cord to it, and it works I think the best that it can. But I couldn't help feeling that it could have worked, better. I just don't know how.
Aside from all that, it's always fun to see Angelina Jolie be a badass in a mildly inventive story with a dash of intrigue and just enough heart to pull it off.
Year: 2010
Score: 7.8
Bottom Line: Try it - you'll like it!
The most significant thing to say about this movie is that it would have been terrible if Tom Cruise had starred in it as originally planned. Because he's good at being a pop icon and worked well in his youth for things like Top Gun and Days of Thunder (both Jerry Bruckheimer movies). But if you want something that has any emotional weight you don't call him. And this movie needed emotional weight.
As you know from the previews, Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy. She insists she's innocent and goes on the run. What follows actually has the substance of a Bourne film, political intrigue and fights that are deeply personal in nature; emotional rather than strictly for survival. Plus, like Bourne, Salt is a little bit MacGuyver, having to be ingenious in finding ways out of the places she finds herself in.
All of the performances are good. Action sequences are decent (the first car chase does go one about 2 trucks too long). THe hand to hand sequences are my favorite and there are enough of those well done enough for my taste.
This movie definitely has an emotional cord to it, and it works I think the best that it can. But I couldn't help feeling that it could have worked, better. I just don't know how.
Aside from all that, it's always fun to see Angelina Jolie be a badass in a mildly inventive story with a dash of intrigue and just enough heart to pull it off.