Salt

Angelina Jolie looks stunning on the poster with that black wig, but don't get too attached—the hairstyle doesn't last long in the movie. And honestly, much like her changing disguises and identities, the movie shifts too, from a fast-paced start to a sluggish middle and a cringeworthy ending. These CIA thrillers just don't have the same punch they used to. Sure, the action is there, but it's marred by shaky cam, which I'm seriously getting tired of. I get it when it's used in a documentary style, but in a regular action thriller? It's just frustrating. Imagine how smooth the action is in Casino Royale—especially that beautifully shot Aston Martin crash at the end—and then compare it to the jarring chaos here. Maybe one day they'll get it right again. (17/09/2010)

I don't like it when someone copies scenes from my favorite films (Noyce is a terrible routinist) and it literally drives me crazy when I guess what’s going to happen after ten minutes and it comes to fruition (keep Wimmer at least ten miles away from Hollywood). Considering that not much more actually happens in the film, I have to wonder why I gave it a relatively high rating. (27/09/2010)

The only win of this movie is Angelina Jolie. Once again she is sexy, tough, and subtle. She shines again. It's just...the movie didn't take me any deeper and unfortunately I didn't believe it. In the beginning, Ev is a bit of a bum who has no idea how to act, where to kick and punch. And look! Suddenly he beats the crap out of four gorillas with his bare hands, kills the Russian president, and turns the whole world upside down. I found the script half-baked and copy-pasted. (08/06/2011)

Entertaining. The beginning is fairly routine, but as the twists begin mounting up, where I no longer understood who, what, how and why such brainless weirdness with excellent action sequences and an original screenplay despite its numerous plotholes was unrolling in front of me. Angelina has gained MacGyver’s ability of being able to make a bazooka out of a chair and a fire extinguisher, hidden behind Ethan Hunt’s makeup techniques. I understand the complaints appearing in other reviews and basically I agree, but overall I rather perversely enjoyed Salt. Another guilty pleasure! (19/11/2010)

The script for Salt probably lay somewhere in a dusty drawer of a Hollywood studio for a few decades because not only its theme but also its spirit belongs to the times of the hardest Cold War and is more paranoid than most famous propaganda films of that time. According to its author, NATO and the USA are crawling with super-secret Russian agents in high positions, including the position of the American president. The main protagonist is a product of women's emancipation and the gender movement to such an extent that she not only equals but also easily outperforms James Bond, so it is no problem for her to eliminate the security of both the Russian and American presidents, storm the heavily guarded bunker where the American president is supposed to take shelter in case of a nuclear conflict, and, above all, she takes down dozens of agents of various kinds. The action is not bad, and I consider it considerably of a higher quality and more entertaining than, for example, The Expendables. But in order for me to actually like this film, it would have to stop pretending to be so serious and stylize itself more into the form of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. But everything is taken deadly seriously and for real, which sounds incredibly foolish with such absurd exaggeration. Average action films are more realistic than this, and on top of that, while Angelina Jolie fits perfectly with her appearance to portray glamorous ladies, I would rather tend to believe in Craig as a super assassin. Overall impression: 25%. (10/03/2011)