By Jason Apuzzo. Now we know why the Chinese communists banned this film.
Before I tell you how deliciously pleasurable and cathartic Salt is, before I begin to gush in embarrassing ways over Angelina Jolie’s pouty lips and high cheekbones – and how sexy she looks decked out in a Russian fur hat (I’m buying one for Govindini immediately; every beautiful woman should have one) – I need to let you in on a few things that may shock you. So here we go:
The premise of the new Angelina Jolie/Phillip Noyce action-thriller Salt is that the United States has been massively penetrated by Cold War-era Soviet communist sleeper agents, who even in exile from contemporary Russia are dead set on America’s destruction. These agents are nasty, dangerous, and out to get every one of us. They hide out in the open, but also in upper echelons of power – where they wait patiently to strike. And there are a helluva lot of them, far too many for our otherwise overloaded intelligence bureaucracies to handle.
How dangerous are these sleeper agents? For starters, their first successful operation – as we are informed by way of flashback – was nothing less than the killing of President Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, who (and here Salt’s fictional story dovetails nicely with actual history) spent several years living in the Soviet Union before returning to his life as an underworld drifter in New Orleans. And now our nation is flooded with such men – cold, calculating, highly effective killers trained to strike on command and plunge America into its final, richly-deserved (from the communist perspective) apocalypse.
Oh, and by the way – one of them might be Angelina Jolie. [I knew those lips were too good to be true!]
Does this premise surprise you? It certainly surprised me, because Hollywood hasn’t been telling stories like this since the 1980’s. But in point of fact, I don’t even recall films with this sort of premise appearing in the 80’s! And it’s for this reason that Jolie, Noyce and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura deserve a lot of credit for bringing this taut, intelligent and politically incorrect thriller to the screen right now, when – ironically – we would seem to need it the most.
I’d like to tell you more about the plot of this film, actually, and take you through every suspenseful twist and turn, but that would spoil the fun when you see it – and really you should see Salt. Because months before Red Dawn is released, months before Mao’s Last Dancer hits theaters – and even, frankly, with an otherwise commendable film like the French Cold War thriller Farewell in theaters right now – Salt is the dealbreaker for me that suggests that Hollywood is not as irretrievably left-liberal-progressive as we’ve been led to believe. It can’t be, at least not any longer; there is simply no way this film could’ve been made, were it so. The sense I have is that a fight is underway in the industry right now, that our national narrative is up for grabs. Maybe it’s backlash against Obama causing this. Maybe it’s too many years of bad movies belittling the war on terror. Who knows? [Plus, there’s also the issue of Jolie’s father, noted Tea Partier Jon Voight. Is some of the old man’s craggy wisdom finally rubbing off on his formerly estranged daughter?]
In any case, Salt really helps matters right now, provided that you’re oriented toward liberty. Salt won’t take back Avatar or a lot of other nonsense that the industry has been dishing out, but it definitely is a shot in the arm. All you really need to know about Salt‘s storyline is this: the film has two major cathartic moments in it, both of which revolve around Angelina Jolie terminating communist agents. And if that doesn’t get your freedom-loving blood flowing, you’re insensate [Or, alternately, you’re one of those well-tailored, narcotized characters in a Christopher Nolan film.]
Salt sets up a situation in which C.I.A. agent Angelina Jolie may be a Soviet sleeper agent. For quite a while we don’t know – indeed, we’re not even sure she knows, a la Bourne. Outwardly, she appears to be a highly effective C.I.A. field operative. We first get to see her in the midst of a harrowing, torture-filled captivity by the North Koreans (the North Koreans wisely keep her in lingerie, however), before she’s released by way of a spy transfer; listen in this sequence, by the way, for the film’s nice potshot at Kim Jong Il. Once back in the States, Jolie just wants to settle down with her nerdy, German entomologist husband and retire upward to a desk job.
Jolie married to a nerdy German entomologist. Holding down a desk job. I know – I laughed, too.
But events won’t let her settle down, of course, because in through the C.I.A.’s door (literally) walks a Soviet agent with a story to tell – a story about a secret communist operation, dating back decades, to train a generation of super-spies to infiltrate the West. These agents are trained to remain undercover, to adopt Western ways (in Jolie’s case, this obviously includes looking fabulous in a pant suit), and to then strike at the opportune moment. Continue reading Jolie vs. The Communists; LFM Reviews Salt
