Salt

This is not a movie about the dangers and benefits of sodium chloride. It’s more about the dangers and benefits of a female Jason Bourne – this time played by Angelina Jolie (although there is a disturbing moment where she’s disguised as a man, using a lot of latex).

The movie starts off with a very uncomfortable (for me, at least) scene, and then gets into some talking, before there’s a pretty long chase (interrupted by a short preparation segment). Shortly thereafter, it wraps up the plot – or at least, what I thought the plot was. I had some idea of what the story was, but they finished it up in less than an hour. From there, I had no idea what was going to happen - which is nice. It’s rare where a movie can go anywhere and I have no idea what’s going to happen next.

This isn’t a perfect movie, however. The music is … not great. Amy thought it was awful. I thought it was better, but not much. The composer is James Newton Howard, who’s a bit of an obvious composer. As in, whatever’s on screen will be obviously reflected in the music.

There are some lines that are very clunky. There’s an atrocious edit between a scene beside a subway and a cut to a singing choir. It’s incredibly jarring, and the editor should have known better. Apparently, the Russian is decent except for Jolie’s, whose accent is atrocious (according to Amy, who would actually know).

The ultimate endgame of the villain is clichéd. As Eyk said to me “Wow - that’s never been done before!” and my sarcasm detector went off the charts. Plus, near the end there’s a loading screen that, given even a modicum of common sense, would never be possible. The circumstances surrounding that loading screen would guarantee that there should absolutely be no loading screen.

There’s a ridiculous descent of an elevator. Jet Li knows how to get down without equipment.

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I thought it was a little odd that a German guy would introduce himself in English before knowing the nationality of the stranger he was talking to, but my friends explained it was probably in the US instead of, you know, Germany. The guy is an arachnologist, which is a nerdy career, but it’s probably called a spider scientist by everyone normal (arachnologist isn’t even recognized by my spell-check).

The movie had a MacGyvered projectile near the beginning of the movie, so I was hoping there would be more of that (Burn Notice has reignited my appetite for homemade devices), but no.

Still, definitely a theatre movie. Of course, part of the entertainment was the company I kept while watching it, so thanks for watching it with me. Be aware you may need a Y chromosome to enjoy it. I think Amy was more entertained by our comments than the movie, so it might help to watch it with friends. Just not Salt. She’ll mess you up.