Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

So I went to see Salt tonight with thalinoviel - we're both Jolie fans and decided the opening night would be the best night to go. We were right too, we caught the 6pm showing and the cinema was only half full :D Got in before the post-work crowd and then got out before the big post movie rush to McD's crowd. Nicely timed by us.

And in between, there was the movie. And much, much squee. :D

(Really, seriously, do NOT read under the cut if you plan to see the movie at any point. Some of the twists must NOT be spoiled before you see them. 'M warning you!)

It was exactly what I'd hoped it be, a cracking, smart thriller that was basically a Jason Bourne but with a female lead. And a hellava lot more plot twists :D And no shaky cam, thank the gods. Basic premise - Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent who we first meet being tortured in a North Korean prison. She's exchanged thanks to the efforts of a man who loves her. We cut to the present day, and Salt is married to aforementioned man, Michael, still working for the CIA in D.C. and blissfully happy with her lot. It's her anniversary, she almost makes it out of work on time but a walk in man, claiming to be a former Soviet spy, announces that a sleeper agent has been activated who will kill the Soviet President. And name of this agent? Evelyn Salt!

It all goes to hell in a handbasket from there. I was expecting Evelyn to run and she did, in a long, thrilling sequence that sees her first break out of the CIA headquarters and then her own apartment building, followed by a gut busting chase across freeways, involving lorry leaping of the highest order. So far, so standard right? I expected the rest of the movie to be her hunt for whoever framed her and then exoneration or, like Bourne, remaining on the run under a new name. Except she goes to D.C., disguises herself and then assasinates the Russian President!!!

I was boggled!

The twist that she actually WAS a sleeper agent, planted long ago as a child, you really don't see coming. It's beautifully done as a flashback, with a couple of neat hints beforehand. And then.....and then the idiot in charge of the whole programme makes a huge, tactical error. This was possibly the only bit I had an issue with - would he really have been that stupid? The tactical error is they've kidnapped Michael, and then shoot him in front of her to test her loyalty. I sat there with my mouth open and watched Jolie very, very subtly suggest, with just a twitch of an eyebrow, an indrawn breath and a deliciously cold, flat expression, make it clear that everyone in that room was going to be very dead, very short. And they were. The shots of her casually flinging grenades around as she slow walks the length of the hideout is just gorgeous.

And now everything's up in the air. She might be a traitor but they've lost her and now she's fighting to stop the next phase, which is to gain control of USA's nuclear arsenal. But! But! There's yet another twist - the real traitor is sitting right next to the president and Salt is just the patsy that's been set up to take the blame! And I can honestly say, hand to heart, that that was the only twist I saw coming, that I called it from almost the beginning of the movie. No huge reason, just a sense that something about a character wasn't quite right. thalinoviel didn't see it coming and she assured me it was suitably gobsmacking. The traitor is her best friend and her boss, Winter. He takes out the entire room of presidential guards and techies and then sets up a nuclear armageddon, aiming missiles at Mecca and Tehran. Salt talks to him as a fellow sleeper but her cover is blown because it's announced on TV that the Russian Premier isn't dead! He was just paralysed by a spider venom. Michael, the dead husband, was an arachnologist! Clearly, she paid attention to her husband's work *grins*.

There follows one of the most brutal hand to hand fights I can remember seeing since, well, since Bourne killed a guy with a rolled up magazine. She manages to take him down at the cost of being taken down herself by the reinforcements. The President, who's the only one who knows Salt wasn't the traitor, is out cold and might not regain sense so she's hauled away as a murderer but still manages to kill Winter in a truly astonishing fashion - she wraps the chains of her handcuffs around his throat and leaps over a bannister....his throat is all that stops her falling 0_0.

She's taken away by helicopter and Peabody - the internal security chap delightfully played by Chewital Eojifer, who hunts her throughout - interrogates her. She tells him his side of it, points out where the weak spots are and he's convinced enough to unlock the chain holding her handcuffs to the copter floor. She flings herself out of the chopper door into a lake. The last shots of the movie are of her running through woods having evaded her capters. And there it's left.

I hope, hope, hope they make a sequel. I hope they do a Bourne trilogy type thing because dammit, we deserve a female action superhero agent like him and Jolie is briliant in the role. It was a well directed movie, nice and taut, the plot kept cracking on and it wasn't so complicated you need a guide but it wasn't so simple you couldn't not pay attention. Very good blend of action and reaction, I thought, and some cracking set pieces - the Russien Premier assassination alone is just amazingly well done.

Overall, this gets two thumbs up from a mousey and a wholehearted recommendation that you check it out at the cinema. If you like action-y Bourne like thrillers, this will be right up your street. :)

SQUEEE!!!

18. If you could make a movie, what sort of movie would you make?

How apt I should be asked this today. I'd like to make a movie like Salt or Bourne because those are the kinds of movies I love best :) Anytime you've got a spy who fights like a ninja and has the improvisational skills of a deadly version of MacGyver, I'm a happy mousey. But I'd have to get someone to write the script because I can't plot for toffee. But yeh, that's the kind of movie I'd make, something reasonably smart but with plenty of shiny, pretty and 'splodey :D