Salt, Phillip Noyce, 100 mins, (12A)
Starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber
Friday 20 August 2010
Latest in Reviews
Related stories
On Facebook
Arts & Ents blogs
Brighton Fringe 2012: laughing through the blood, sweat and tears
It has been an emotional journey. The three weeks of intense activity that make up England's larges...
Disclosure: We’d never even been to a club when we made our first single
For most of us, reaching eighteen years of age opens up a new world for exploration, spontaneity and...
Something For The Weekend in London: May 25 – May 27
With 20+ degree weather expected to last all weekend in the capital, we'd be silly not to make the m...
We've had Bond. We've had Bourne. Now we have... Salt.
This is the name of Angelina Jolie's CIA operative who's survived torture in a North Korean dungeon, but is then accused of being a Soviet sleeper agent on a mission to kill the US President and precipitate World War Three. Can this be? The plot of Phillip Noyce's spy thriller is continually and unutterably absurd, yet for the first hour, when Salt goes on the run from the Agency, packs a fair few thrills. The stunts alone are Bourne-again standard: escaping from a sealed building by means of a home-made rocket-launcher, jumping off an overpass and landing on the roof of a passing tanker, then jumping off that to catch a truck going the other way. Sprained ankle? Fractured elbow? Salt doesn't break so much as a sweat. Later in the film she pursues a descending elevator down the shaft, leaping from one ledge to another without the aid of rope, crampon, anything. Even her switches of disguise defy explanation: she strolls away from one calamitous car-wreck and pops up next scene in a fetching fur hat-and-stole combo, looking like Fendi's autumn catalogue cover. How? While Jolie proceeds without a scratch, I found myself nursing a bad case of whiplash after two wild plot swerves – don't say you weren't warned.
Our Culture Club is looking for reader reviews of Salt; leave your thoughts below.
- 1 Publishing: Rude bits in disguise
- 2 One is nipping to Tesco: Jubilant Jubilee royals as seen by Alison Jackson
- 3 The 100 favourite fictional characters... as chosen by 100 literary luminaries
- 4 A dark day for goths (in a good way)
- 5 The London 2012 Festival: The greatest show of a great year
- 6 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (12A)
- 7 French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy calls for West to intervene in Syria
- 8 Free Range: Meet the designers of tomorrow
- 9 Nazis, nannies and hair omelettes: Leonora Carrington, the last living Surrealist, looks back on her extraordinary life and times
- 10 Ladyhawke: Asperger's and the anxious pop sensation
- 1 Mark Zuckerberg saved $111m by selling Facebook shares before stock slumped
- 2 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 3 Society: The only way is Finland
- 4 Schoolboy spiked brownies with cannabis in cookery class
- 5 FSA 'powerless' over JP Morgan
- 6 48 Hours In: Faro
- 7 'Hello mum, this is going to be hard for you to read ...'
- 8 African monkey meat that could be behind the next HIV
- 9 Coke reveals its secret: It may need to carry a cancer warning
- 10 French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters
Experience the Heineken Hub
Get free wi-fi and exclusive i content while you enjoy a tasty pint of Heineken at participating pubs.
Can you imagine a career in teaching?
Be inspired to teach - let real teachers show you how rewarding the job can be.
Playing a game-changing role during the Games
Cisco is providing the solutions for London 2012's complex IT needs.
Enter the latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Business videos from commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
Career Services
Ridley Scott: The most macho man in movies?
Gallic gourmets put France back on culinary map
The outsider: Margaret Howell
For men only: A pilgrimage to Mount Athos
Feeding a hungry world – or meddling with laws of nature?



Comments