SALT – A movie review

Salt is an action spy film starring Angelina Jolie whose name in the movie was Evelyn Salt, hence the title. She plays an American secret agent being accused as a Russian sleeper spy so she decides to run and clear her name. The movie begins with Salt being tortured in a North Korean prison on suspicion of espionage. Soon she is traded for a North Korean prisoner and released to the custody of Winter, her CIA boss and into the waiting arms of her scientist boyfriend, Mike. She later learns that it was thru Mike’s persistence/petitions to find and release her that she had been allowed to be set free. Two years later, Salt and Mike are set to celebrate their wedding anniversary. They plan to hold a simple dinner at home but as Salt and Winter are walking out of the office, a Russian defector comes in claiming to have valuable information for them. Salt and Winter return upstairs and proceed to the investigation room to listen to what the defector had to say. He begins by saying that his name is Orlov and narrates a story of a Russian program wherein Russian children had been trained to become sleeper spies some day. They are either exchanged for kidnapped American babies or sent to the US to be adopted. He further narrates that said spies are codenamed K-12s and shall keep their identities secret until Day X comes which begins with the murder of the Russian president during the US Vice-president’s funeral the next day. The mission will be over with the US president’s assassination a day later and the Russian domination shall begin. The agents do not believe the defector’s story and so as Salt was walking out the door, he calmly states that the sleeper agent tasked to assassinate the Russian president, was named Evelyn Salt. Salt walks out and proceeds to the viewing room where Winter and the other agents were, she sees that the lie detector scan confirms the defector’s story. But Salt insists on her innocence and gets upset when she is asked to remain inside a locked room as the others discuss what to do with her. Orlov is escorted by two CIA agents but when they enter an elevator, he proceeds to kill his two escorts and calmly walks out of the CIA building. Salt, meanwhile, was allowed to use her phone and when she attempts to call her husband, Mike, all she gets is the recorded message in their answering machine. It was then that Salt realized that she and her husband are in danger so when she saw that the other agents were distracted with Orlov’s escape, she sets out to make an escape of her own. She gets trapped in an empty floor and concocts an explosive weapon using the leg of one of the tables (traces of MacGyver here eh?) and escapes the lockdown and team of agents running after her. She reaches her apartment and sees evidence that Mike was kidnapped. She then proceeds to pack her bags and take their dog and some of Mike’s spiders with her. She climbs out the window just as a SWAT team enters her home. She climbs down to a neighbor’s apartment and changes clothes but as she was walking out the building, Winter spots her and a chase ensues. They almost corner her at a bridge so she jumps off it and lands on a truck and jumps from one truck to another until she finally reaches the ground safely, steals a motorcycle from a passing rider and safely escape her pursuers. Salt proceeds to New York and rents a hotel room where she extracts venom from a spider and dyes her hair black. She is seen studying a blueprint of tunnels to the cathedral and some flashbacks reveal that she is indeed a sleeper agent and makes plans to enter the church where the US VP shall be honored during his funeral. The next day, as the Russian president speaks, she explodes the floor where he was then standing on causing him to fall down to her level. She shoots the Russian president just as CIA agents come in and surrenders to her colleague Agent Peabody. On the way to the hospital, the Russian president was confirmed dead. Salt is handcuffed and transported through the city but manages to disable both her escorts even the driver and makes the vehicle flip and fall down to the street below. She escapes in the ensuing milieu. She proceeds to the barge where Orlov and the rest of the Russian sleeper agents are hiding. Thru flashbacks it was established that Salt grew up and was trained in Russia along with other children by a master who turns out to be Orlov. Orlov informs her that the next step of their plan is to seize nuclear weapons and stage a war between Russia and the US. She sees Mike being held captive in one portion of the ship but Orlov sought to test her loyalty and kills Mike while she watched unmoving. He then escorts her into his office where he informs her about her rendezvous with another agent the next day. They celebrate with wine and then Salt proceeds to cut Orlov’s throat with the wine glass they were drinking from, gets some guns, grenades and kills everyone on the barge. The next day, Salt meets a NATO officer, another sleeper spy who sneaks her into the White House disguised as his male aide. The NATO officer then launches a suicide attack so that the Secret Service and Winter take the President into the bunkhouse for his safety…or so they thought. Salt follows them underground and takes out the Secret service agents that block her way. Inside the bunkhouse, the President starts to raise the terror alert since Russia seemed intent to fire their nuclear weapons at the US to avenge their President’s death. Winter then starts to shoot everybody else in the room and introduces himself to the President as Nikolai Tarkovsky, another Russian sleeper agent. When the President refused to launch the missiles, Winter knocks him out and aims missiles at Mecca, Saudi Arabia and Tehran to unite Muslims against the US. Salt persuades Winter to let her inside since after all they were on the same side but TV reports revealed that the Russian president was still alive and had recovered after being injected with the spider venom that Salt used. Winter got mad at Salt for falling in love with Mike thus making her unable to push through with her mission. He told her that it was their intention to kidnap Mike as insurance because they do not trust that she will push though with the mission. Salt is able to enter the bunkhouse and manages to wrestle the control switch from Winter and aborts the firing of nuclear weapons. At this point, secret service agents have arrived and they handcuff Salt while Winter was being treated for his wounds near the staircase. When Salt saw an opportunity, she jumped to the stairway, strangling Winter and breaking his neck with her wrist cuffs. Agent Peabody takes her on a helicopter ride to custody and he asked why she killed Winter and her only response was that someone had to do it. She proceeds to tell him her story about the sleeper agents and why they had to be stopped. At first, Peabody refused to believe her but later on realizes that she did not really kill the Russian president and himself…she only wants to exact revenge on her fellow Russian sleepers since they took everything from her. Then he receives a confirmation that Salt’s prints were found at Orlov’s barge so he became convinced that she would stop at nothing until all of the K-12 spies are killed. He removes her handcuffs and jumps from the chopper, escaping into the river and running freely into the woods. The movie had great action scenes which were quite remarkable since they say some scenes Angelina Jolie did herself, with the help of a trainer. But, of course, with these kinds of films, you have to suspend disbelief for a few moments and just accept the implausible plot and flawed premise that is being presented…even for just the one and a half hour of viewing the film. Still it was entertaining and truly action packed!