Sometimes it is necessary for someone to take a hit for the team.  This time it was my turn, since even my movie companion, Al Carbon, fell soundly asleep.  Watching Salt was a thoroughly painful experience that included a ridiculous plot, terrible Russian accents, dull action sequences, stilted dialogue, and characters with the depth of cardboard cutouts.

The movie is so bad that any attempt at “saving” it for the readers by giving warnings about spoilers should be construed as an explicit disregard for said readers’ wellbeing.  Don’t watch this movie.  Don’t let my sacrifice go to waste.  These warnings should be enough to stop you.  However, in case I have not dissuaded you from harming yourself, I will continue.

In the Angelina-Jolie-vehicle-for-coolness also known as Salt, Jolie plays undercover CIA field agent Evelyn Salt, who has just been outed as a Soviet (yes, Soviet not Russian) double agent.  She, along with hundreds of other agents, had been placed in the United States while still a child.  These kids were supposed to infiltrate and blend in the US in order to bring it down.  Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, they want to help hasten the rebirth of a Russia that has grown weak and soft.

I’m not sure what Russia this movie is talking about, because Russia remade in the image of Vlad Putin is pretty freaking tough right now.  Maybe the script was written in the mid-nineties, which would explain a lot. The person who wrote this either did not see Spy Games (which interestingly had Brad Pitt in it), any of the Bourne movies, and latest Bond incarnation, or they simply wanted to go back to a slower, more boring kind of spy movie.  Which brings me to the cardinal sin of this movie: namely, that it is a boring action movie.

Action movies are supposed to keep you engaged for ninety or so minutes.  They are supposed to make the reptilian portion of your brain light up.  Salt simply does not do it.  Somehow, the director, Phillip Noyce, managed to walk the fine line between the scenes not being believable and at the same time have them not be interesting.  Perhaps it is the fact that only in a supernatural world like that of Wanted could it be believable that Angelina Jolie could punch or kick her way out of a fight.  But here, in a loosely real world, it simply is not.

The action was also not compelling because it mostly did not seem necessary.  More than once, I found myself asking “Why is she even doing that?” and not in a good “wow what is going on here” way, but rather in a “this is stupid” kind of way.

If the reptilian brain was completely unengaged, the emotional mammalian one was simply ignored.  It was impossible to care about any of the characters.  Salt, the character, is supposed to be motivated first by the love for her husband, and later for her desire to exact vengeance from the clan of Soviet spies she belonged to.  None of it is particularly credible.

When Salt tries to make a big deal out of how the Soviets took everything from her by killing her husband, the scene falls flat.  We never get, on an emotive level, any kind of justification to care about her relationship with her husband.  In addition, it seems almost absurd to make a fuss about how she, the spy, lost everything because of her spy background.  One has to ask oneself: isn’t that par for the course?  Isn’t that danger something that all spies have to live with and be ready for?  How can we take Salt seriously if she acts like this is all a new development?  We can’t, and if you cannot take the protagonist of a spy movie seriously then you cannot take the movie seriously. The suspension of disbelief is broken, and all we are left with is a boring movie with terribly long but tired action sequences.

Please vote with your money.  Don’t see this crap, and maybe the next time Angelina Jolie makes a movie to look cool in, there will be some pressure to have it also be a good movie.  And since Salt ends threatening a sequel I will hold all of you accountable for how that one turns out.