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Viewers are now tired of watching the so called 'spy action thrillers'. Phillip Noyce either failed to understand that, or considered us masochists.
Noyce's two earlier movies 'The Saint' and 'The Bone Collector' had a riveting story beside thrill, suspense and action; however in 'Salt' the story is too banal and formulaic.
The film stars Angelina Jolie, whose character Evelyn Salt goes on a run to exculpate herself from being accused of a KGB sleeper agent. How she beats the hell out of the bad guys, faces all the dangers, clears away all the acquisitions make up the interest of the story. The strange thing is, the issue of cold-war had gone buried decades ago, why then Noyce felt bothered about referring to that forgotten era, isn’t clear. The entire flashback episode shows how Soviet agents taught Salt how to strike an attack on the US. Wow! Noyce is too imaginative here; Soviet agents were surely not that stupid.
Apart from such a senseless script, actor performance is also a letdown. Jolie got a whole new attitude after the ‘Lara Croft’ series. I think she decided to appear in action-packed movies only and Noyce agreed to promote her, otherwise there’s no explanation as to why the script was written second time thinking of her in the lead role instead of Tom Cruise, selected initially. Anyways, Jolie’s acting isn’t satisfactory and same applies to Liev Schreiber and Daniel Olbrychski.
Having said all these, I should add that ‘Salt’ was a success in box-office scoring $284 million. However, being a critic I have to sound a bit hard-nosed as financial success and critical acclamation are different altogether.
Noyce's two earlier movies 'The Saint' and 'The Bone Collector' had a riveting story beside thrill, suspense and action; however in 'Salt' the story is too banal and formulaic.
The film stars Angelina Jolie, whose character Evelyn Salt goes on a run to exculpate herself from being accused of a KGB sleeper agent. How she beats the hell out of the bad guys, faces all the dangers, clears away all the acquisitions make up the interest of the story. The strange thing is, the issue of cold-war had gone buried decades ago, why then Noyce felt bothered about referring to that forgotten era, isn’t clear. The entire flashback episode shows how Soviet agents taught Salt how to strike an attack on the US. Wow! Noyce is too imaginative here; Soviet agents were surely not that stupid.
Apart from such a senseless script, actor performance is also a letdown. Jolie got a whole new attitude after the ‘Lara Croft’ series. I think she decided to appear in action-packed movies only and Noyce agreed to promote her, otherwise there’s no explanation as to why the script was written second time thinking of her in the lead role instead of Tom Cruise, selected initially. Anyways, Jolie’s acting isn’t satisfactory and same applies to Liev Schreiber and Daniel Olbrychski.
Having said all these, I should add that ‘Salt’ was a success in box-office scoring $284 million. However, being a critic I have to sound a bit hard-nosed as financial success and critical acclamation are different altogether.
not a big fan of Angie 
I liked it enough to not regret renting it. I might buy it one day, but I'll wait til it hits the bargain bin.