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starladySalt. Dir. Phillip Noyce, 2010.
OMG, Salt is awesome. More precisely, Evelyn Salt, played by Angelina Jolie, is unbelievably awesome.
The movie starts out with C.I.A. field agent Evelyn Salt being captured and tortured in North Korea and, having been exchanged, living to die another day (like James Bond, you know). Two years later, it's Salt's and her arachnologist husband's two-year anniversary and she's on her way out the door when an FSB agent walks through it claiming to be a defector with valuable information about a cadre of long-term Soviet sleeper agents plotting to kill the Russian president on U.S. soil the next day in New York--and that Evelyn Salt is the name of the sleeper agent who's been chosen to carry out the assassination (not entirely unlike Jason Bourne, you know). Unable to prove her innocence or to protect her husband within C.I.A. custody, Salt goes on the run, with her closest friend at the agency (Liev Schreiber) and a counter-security agent (Chiwetl Ejiofor) doing their best to catch her.
Oh man, Evelyn Salt is the most badass female character I have ever seen in a movie, bar none. My dad brought up Lara Croft (also played by Angelina Jolie) as a possible comparison, but Lara Croft is sexualized in a way that Evelyn Salt isn't. She is absolutely fucking lethal, and she buzzsaws a path through everyone who gets in her way, and when she strangles a guy with her handcuff chains off a balcony people in the theater cheered. It was amazing. Also, she was given an emotional motivation just like many male spy action heroes (again, Bourne and the newest Bond), which I frankly was not expecting, and at the end when she strikes a deal with Ejiofor's counter-security agent I was basically in love with the movie. A black man and a white woman out secretly in league to exterminate (white male) secret agents!? FUCK YEAH!
Speaking of secret agents, the movie's plot seems unexpectedly topical in light of the recent Russian agent ring's exposure here in the States--like those guys, the Soviet agents in this movie keep it old school, right down to shoe knives. Unlike those guys, the Soviet agents in this movie are frightening, and frighteningly effective.
OMG, Salt is awesome. More precisely, Evelyn Salt, played by Angelina Jolie, is unbelievably awesome.
The movie starts out with C.I.A. field agent Evelyn Salt being captured and tortured in North Korea and, having been exchanged, living to die another day (like James Bond, you know). Two years later, it's Salt's and her arachnologist husband's two-year anniversary and she's on her way out the door when an FSB agent walks through it claiming to be a defector with valuable information about a cadre of long-term Soviet sleeper agents plotting to kill the Russian president on U.S. soil the next day in New York--and that Evelyn Salt is the name of the sleeper agent who's been chosen to carry out the assassination (not entirely unlike Jason Bourne, you know). Unable to prove her innocence or to protect her husband within C.I.A. custody, Salt goes on the run, with her closest friend at the agency (Liev Schreiber) and a counter-security agent (Chiwetl Ejiofor) doing their best to catch her.
Oh man, Evelyn Salt is the most badass female character I have ever seen in a movie, bar none. My dad brought up Lara Croft (also played by Angelina Jolie) as a possible comparison, but Lara Croft is sexualized in a way that Evelyn Salt isn't. She is absolutely fucking lethal, and she buzzsaws a path through everyone who gets in her way, and when she strangles a guy with her handcuff chains off a balcony people in the theater cheered. It was amazing. Also, she was given an emotional motivation just like many male spy action heroes (again, Bourne and the newest Bond), which I frankly was not expecting, and at the end when she strikes a deal with Ejiofor's counter-security agent I was basically in love with the movie. A black man and a white woman out secretly in league to exterminate (white male) secret agents!? FUCK YEAH!
Speaking of secret agents, the movie's plot seems unexpectedly topical in light of the recent Russian agent ring's exposure here in the States--like those guys, the Soviet agents in this movie keep it old school, right down to shoe knives. Unlike those guys, the Soviet agents in this movie are frightening, and frighteningly effective.