Salt

Directed by: Phillip Noyce
Written by: Kurt Wimmer
Full credits at IMDb

The most glaring aspect of Salt [is] its calculated unobjectability. Of course the movie opens with waterboarding North Koreans. North Koreans are so evil! Who could dare disagree?

On its face, Salt’s title role looks kind of risky: what kind of Hollywood A-lister takes a part as a Soviet sleeper-spy committed to carrying out the orders of her comrade overlords? (Sean Penn?) That’s when you realize why the movie’s convoluted plotting has the Russian spies killing the Russian president (“Matveyev”), or why Salt kills only filthy, stinkin’, vodka-swillin’, tattoo-covered Commies: it’s a weird political cover for film and star, before she undertakes her superhero-origins-like conversion to full-on good guy. Er, gal. It’s not like she killed any Americans: I’m pretty sure that in every scene she violently disarmed her American opponents and nothing more...

Hell, even making the Russians the bad guys—bent on taking over America’s nukes, because that’s one way to win an arms race—is kind of hilarious: it’s so inherently kitschy, no matter how solemn the film looks, so pre-Craig Bond...

Keep reading my conversation with Benjamin Sutton at The L Magazine


Watch the trailer: