Finding a strong female lead for any movie is tough. Finding a strong female lead for an edge-of-your-seat action movie is even tougher. But the executives in charge of Salt found that in Angelina Jolie. In a movie originally written for Tom Cruise, the producers had Jolie read and decided to change the entire story around to focus on a female CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy. One great characteristic of Jolie is that she is versatile – she can change roles, characters, anything in a heartbeat and make you believe that this is who she really is. That is a trait of a great actor. In Salt, Jolie jumps between the vulnerable Evelyn Salt, to the mysterious Evelyn Salt back to the vulnerable Evelyn Salt all in one scene. The audience has no idea which way is up or down. They are taken on a roller coaster ride of adrenaline and better yet, emotion with Evelyn Salt that you begin to feel for her no matter what situation she somehow gets involved in.To catch up those who have not seen this movie yet, Salt centers around Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative who through an interrogation with a Russian super person, gets accused of being a Russian spy. Thus begins her complicated story of convincing herself and her fellow colleagues that she is not a bad guy. With her worry for her husband (who is a Russian professor and arachnologist, if that’s a word) and her constant claim of innocence through multiple actions scenes, the audience begins to feel for her and think that she is being set-up so they start to think, who set her up? No spoilers will be given away in this review, you are just going to watch it for yourself.
The part that was the most interesting besides the action scenes was that Jolie played a vulnerable character in Salt. Unlike Mrs. Smith in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she is always worried that something will happen to her therefore always looking over her shoulder, worried about herself and everyone else around her. She has moments in the movie where the audience can see the wall that Salt has built around herself to not let anyone in breakdown – the emotions come out and you see her as a human being instead of a CIA agent/possible Russian spy. Jolie plays with those emotions so well that you believe anything she says and disbelieve anything says to the contrary. You want to believe that she isn’t a Russian spy because if she is, then what does all of this vulnerability mean? Again, no spoilers here – you will just have to watch the movie yourself to see what it all means.
For a great action movie, with a lady as the lead action star, this movie gets 5/5 stars because it rocked and so does Angelina Jolie.
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