Cold War, cold fish

It's been a while since the phrase "Mr. President, I recommend we move from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 5" has made an appearance in a new release. Salt, a muddled thriller by director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger), features this and more Cold War tropes and clichés.

Noyce's picture has a promising premise: Angelina Jolie is Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer accused of being a KGB sleeper agent. In an attempt to foil a dastardly Russian plot and clear her name, Salt breaks out of CIA custody, evades capture and battles her enemies. Alas, the film is a limpid article, beset by lazy plotting and leaden attempts at portraying acid antipathy.

The avoidance of plot spoilers offers a suitable excuse to avoid recounting Salt's meandering storyline, and I take it up with no mean amount of relief. Suffice it to say the tale collapses of its own weight, and such trifles as character motivation and psychological validity are dispensed with almost entirely.

Jolie is misused as the absurdly named super spy. Her sleek, angular features lend a quality of unreality to an already implausible plot. Liev Schreiber as Ted Winter, our protagonist's foil, is as varied as an alarm bell, which is to say barely at all. And like a succession of nearly identical notes, his performance is not only disinteresting but annoying.

Salt is a throwback thriller by a throwback director whose best work is likely behind him. The trouble with reprising themes from the Cold War is that it's over, and unlike other historical conflicts, knowing the outcome of this tense but relatively bloodless period bleeds it of its ability to generate suspense. Though set in the present, the film depends for its animating principle on the desire of Russia to bring the West to its knees, and is thus necessarily nonthreatening.

An Orwellian subplot features the brainwashing and drilling of children in an attempt to modify their characters and transform them into ideal sleeper agents honed and readied to strike. When the graduating classes of this horrific boot camp come face to face later in life, an opportunity for real drama is missed.

Noyce's effects team has their hands full attempting to compensate for a thin script with sexy extravaganzas, and they ultimately fail. Some exciting chase sequences are worthy as far they go, but once concluded, the slick aesthetic achieved by cinematographer Robert Elswit has an anodyne effect, distancing the viewer from a position of empathy. These are cartoon characters motivated by the necessities of advancing the plot rather than human emotion or self-motivated cunning. The question raised is "Why do I care?" Sadly, the query proves rhetorical.

The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence excepted, Noyce's filmography is a litany of mediocrity. As with his last collaboration with Jolie (The Bone Collector), Salt is an instantly forgettable cinematic mistake, barely up to the task of enabling the pleasant passing of time. Just how Noyce has managed a career in the movie business is a mystery, but one suspects the hackneyed auteur's intermittent ability to turn a profit for cynical studio heads as the principle cause. Salt's considerable box office receipts will doubtless ensure the availability of further blunders in the future.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com