Salt: Movie Review

Salt stars Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt, Liev Schreiber as Ted Winter, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peabody and Daniel Olbrychski as Orlov. Phillip Noyce directed it from a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer. It was released in 2010.

Salt: Title

The title is the name of the Protagonist of the story, Evelyn Salt, a classic title archetype.

(For more on titles, see How to Choose a Title For Your Novel)

Salt: Logline

When a CIA agent is accused by a defector of being a Russian deep cover infiltrator who is part of a plot to assassinate the President of Russia and cause a nuclear war, she must decide where her loyalties lie as she takes her revenge on the powerful forces from her past that have set her up.

(For more on loglines, see The Killogator Logline Formula)

Salt: Plot Synopsis

Note: Spoilers are blacked out like like this [blackout]secret[/blackout]. To reveal a spoiler, just highlight it.

The Walk-in

Salt is a CIA agent, working with Winter and Peabody. The CIA calls them in to interrogate a ‘walk-in’ defector, Orlov. The defector claims the KGB has infiltrated long-term sleeper agents into the USA, brainwashing them as children and then sending them to grow up in the USA in perfect cover. Orlov also claims that the KGB has activated the sleepers and ordered them to assassinate the President of Russia, who’s in New York for the funeral of the US Vice President.

The defector also claims Salt is one of the sleeper agents, but the CIA agents dismiss this as disinformation. However, Peabody says they must investigate the claim and arrests Salt. Salt is concerned about her husband, who she can’t contact, so she escapes from Peabody, goes on the run, and heads home. There, she realises that the Russians have kidnapped her husband.

See Salt Run

Eventually, a flashback shows us that Salt is a Russian sleeper agent. She attacks the vice-president’s funeral and appears to kill the Russian president before surrendering to the New York police. Cue a highly implausible set-piece car chase, as Salt commandeers a police car and Tazers the cops with their own guns.

Having escaped, Salt goes to a ship on the Hudson and meets with Orlov, who’s the man who trained her. Orlov is holding her husband, and he’s unhappy about the fact that Salt married against orders. [blackout]He kills her husband to test Salt’s loyalty. She appears to be unconcerned.[/blackout]

Orlov explains the next step of his plan is to start a nuclear war between Russia and the USA and that Salt’s role is to infiltrate the White House and kill the President. [blackout]Salt kills Orlov and everyone else on the boat, seemingly in revenge for the death of her husband.[/blackout]

Let’s Kill the President

A fellow sleeper agent [blackout]gets Salt into the White House and blows himself up so the President will flee to his bunker where Salt can trap him. Winter is with the President and also heads to the bunker. In the bunker, Winter kills everyone except the President. Unknown to Salt, Winter is also a Russian sleeper agent. He prepares a nuclear strike using the President’s codes.[/blackout]

Salt [blackout]reaches the bunker. Winter is about to let her in, when he learns that the Russian President is not really dead – Salt shot him with spider venom that temporarily paralysed him. Salt gets into the bunker and fights Winter. At the last second, she stops the nuclear attack and kills Winter. The Secret Service takes her to a helicopter where she meets Peabody. Salt tells Peabody her side of the story. He believes her but thinks no one else will. He lets her jump from the helicopter into the Potomac River to escape.[/blackout]

(For more on summarising stories, see How to Write a Novel Synopsis)

Salt: Analysis

I’d heard bad things about this movie, so it pleasantly surprised me. It was not at all the dumb chase thriller I expected.

Perhaps the poor reviews were because the core mystery, ‘is the heroine a Russian agent or not’, wasn’t one that appealed to a US audience (tellingly, the film did better internationally than it did in the US). [blackout] Also, the way Salt lets her husband die, although understandable, doesn’t make her very sympathetic. [/blackout]

Salt Explained in a Nutshell

So, for some reason, the Russians want to kill their own president and start a nuclear war and they’re activating their sleeper-agents in the USA to do so. Salt (Angelina Jolie) is one of the sleeper agents. But she married an American, and when the Russians kill her husband to ‘test her loyalty’, she flips and is out for revenge. She tricks the Russians into thinking she’s still following her orders by shooting the Russian president with spider venom, so he appears to be dead, then goes to the White House to stop another Russian sleeper agent, Winter (Liev Schreiber), from killing the US president and starting a nuclear war. She kills Winter, saves the president, stops the nuclear war and then escapes.

The director’s cut is the same except it turns out the plot wasn’t really to start a nuclear war, it was to kill the US president, because the US vice-president is a Russian sleeper agent too. Although Salt stops the nuclear war and kills Winter, she can’t save the president, and so the plot succeeds and the USA now has a Russian agent as president.

So Salt is a Russian Spy After All?

Yes. She’s a sleeper agent, which is a spy who infiltrates a country but doesn’t do any spying, just maintains their cover and tries to get in useful positions, waiting for the day they’ll be activated.

But Why Did Salt Kill Orlov?

Clearly she was a lot fonder of her husband than she appeared to be: she’d married him against orders and escaped CIA custody because she was worried about him. When she reacted with indifference to her husband’s death, it was just to trick Orlov so his guard would be down and she could stop his plans and take revenge. This is clearer in the extended edition where there she doesn’t kill Orlov straight away on the boat, but has a confrontation with him in Russia at the end of the movie.

Implausibility

The implausibility of the action scenes, Salt jumping up, down and sideways much further than is humanly possible being just one criticism, makes the film seem preposterous despite the plot holding together pretty well, with one exception.

That exception is: ‘Why are the Russians doing this?’ It must be only a faction in Russia who are responsible, given they try to kill their own president. That could make sense, but why does this Russian faction try to start a nuclear war? How is that going to help them? The Director’s Cut answers this question: [blackout]the conspiracy is not to start a war, but to kill the US president and make an opening for a Russian sleeper agent to take over the USA. But given that, again, why did Winter try to activate the nuclear strike? It beats me.[/blackout]

What’s with all the alternate versions?

The DVD of Salt has three versions: the Original Theatrical Version, the Director’s Cut and the Extended Version. So what are the differences and which version is the best?

The Original Theatrical Version and the Director’s Cut are essentially the same, [blackout]cuts being mostly to Salt’s husband’s death, which is much less gruesome in the theatrical cut in order to get the film a PG-13 (UK 15) rating. The end changes slightly in the Director’s Cut: the President doesn’t survive, and it’s implied that his successor is a Russian sleeper agent.[/blackout]

The Extended Cut differs much more. In the key scene on the boat.[blackout] Salt doesn’t kill Orlov, setting up a completely different ending. The theatrical and Director’s cuts end with Salt on the run, the extended cut with her escaping US custody and taking revenge on Orlov, who has returned to Russia.[/blackout]

Personally, I preferred the extended edition. [blackout]As she doesn’t kill Orlov halfway through the film,[/blackout] the question of Salt’s loyalties is kept open for longer. It makes her more of an anti-hero, which I like.

Salt: Alternative Movie Poster

Here’s my design for an alternate, minimalist poster for Salt. It takes the original poster and simplifies it down to just the instantly recognisable image of Angelina Jolie’s face. I felt that the original poster marred that iconic image by obscuring her face with the title. I also thought a light sans-serif font would be more subtle. Click the poster to see my alternative posters for other spy thrillers.

Salt: My Rating

Much better than you might expect. Well worth watching if you like plot-led, action-packed spy films.

Want to watch it?

Here’s the trailer:

The DVD is on Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.

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