Guns!
Spies!
Russians!
Double Agents!
Angelina Jolie!
If we look at the Mindless Movie checklist (if someone knows where this is then please let me know...I seem to have misplaced it), "Salt" is filling every check box all the way down the page. Benjy really liked it while Amy seemed to hate it. I would say I sit somewhere in between. I liked that they kept me guessing with the twisting and turning plot. I also liked the unique action sequences...remember I like movies that do fresh new things when it comes to action scenes. And Angelina Jolie is pretty nice to look at for a few hours (better than Tom Cruise, whom the script was originally written for). But you can read about most of the things that I would talk about from Benjy and Amy. So I decided to avoid rehashing all of the same things in this post. Instead I have decided to do a shameless spoiler post and complain about all of the things that have aggravated me since I left the movie theater. And the more I have thought about it, there are more and more things in this movie that are just plain stupid.
So as a service to those of you who may wish to see this movie in the future...
SPOILER ALERT!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!
First off...What is up with the title of the movie? It comes from Jolie's character name, Evelyn Salt, but from what I can tell they could have given her any last name at all and it would make no difference to the movie. It's not as if "Salt" evokes any type of emotion or excitement in an audience. It's like naming a movie "Pepper" or "Ketchup". So for future reference...spices and condiments should not be used to name movies...end of story.
Next...I had no idea that "arachnologist" was a real profession or that there could be a leading expert in the world on this fictional subject. OHHHHHHH! Spider expert...well why didn't you say so??? I thought it might be some other random word with "ologist" tacked on the end to make him sound smart. I have so many issues with this guy that I don't even know where to start. Let's begin with the fact that there is no way that an arachnologist has the ability to attract someone like Angelina Jolie. Sure...true love is blind...but this dude eats breakfast with spiders on the table. Heck, he probably enjoys sitting in a dark room milking them for their poison! Oh, don't let his dorky/psychopathic veneer fool you...he probably has to beat the ladies off with a stick!
Even more ridiculous is how Dr. Spider and Ms. Salt met for the first time. Evelyn Salt was assigned to "get close" to the arachnologist because he was able to go into North Korea to study spiders. Really??? Kim Jong Il, the "Supreme Leader" of North Korea, has such an affinity for spiders that he allows western arachnologists into his country to study them? Maybe there is a worldwide arachnologist society with so much political influence that he just couldn't turn them down. Or maybe Mike Krause (the arachnologist in question) is such good pals with the communist leader that when he asked for the release of his wife from a north Korean prison, Kim Jong Il simply couldn't say no. BFFs for sure!...No word yet if Mike forgave him for the whole torturing Evelyn stuff... (Just as I was about to post this I discovered that Arachnology is a real science...according to Wikipedia...there are even academic societies...although none from North Korea surprisingly!...I believe a quick Google image search for "Arachnologist" *Not for the squeamish* proves my nerd/psycho point...check out the one with the spider on her face!!!)
So if you suspend your preconceived notions about science nerds and communist leaders then this whole part of the plot makes perfect sense. Except if you then start to question how every agent in the CIA is actually a Russian sleeper agent planted before the Cold War ended. It's getting a little tough to incorporate Cold War story lines into current movies. The Cold War ended in 1991...19 years ago...and we are led to believe that there was a large group of children being trained for the sole purpose of bringing down the American scum. 12 year old communists...dangerous stuff!!! So when they finally get around to putting their plan into action their first act is to...kill the Russian president! Wait...WHAT??? That's an aggressive strategy to return mother Russia to world domination...let's see how this plays out.
The biggest problem that I have with this movie isn't the fact that Angelina Jolie falls out of a helicopter into the Potomac and swims safely to shore...or that jumping from truck roof to truck roof on a freeway interchange could never happen (although this was mindlessly entertaining)...or the time that Angelina dresses up as a man with a latex face (*shudder*)...or the part where the CIA AND the Secret Service appear to have the Russian president locked down and one of the characters says something to the effect of "We'll if she is going to try something now it's going to be amazing!". That's not even foreshadowing for crying out loud!!!
My biggest problem with this movie (as it is with most movies these days) is the shameless attempt to generate a sequel for every movie that is released. One of Jolie's last lines is "I'm going to kill them all" and the final scene has her running through a forest evading her captors. I hate this so much! Is it too much to ask to have a nice story told in 2 hours or less and wrap everything up nice and neat so that I can move on with my life? I think Benjy made an interesting point...movies that become successful franchises typically come from stuff that people have already been exposed to (books...comics...TV Shows...Oh I am scared to see if they keep making "The Last Airbender" movies!). I can only think of a handful of recent franchises that started as just movies...The Matrix...Shrek...Austin Powers...Pirates of the Caribbean (although apparently this is based on a Disney theme park attraction). However, studios keep trying to generate sequel buzz. Of the movies we have watched this summer...I can count at least 7 that had shameless "Lost in Space" endings (Benjy explains this term in the link above). One will actually get another crack at it ( it was already a sequel...can you guess what it is?) and maybe a couple more will have some more money thrown at them, only to repeat the cycle and leave the next movie dangling out there in a sequel black hole.
Need a rating...I give it four CIA agents out of 7 russian sleeper spies. Yeah...that sounds about right!
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