Salt - insert pun here

As I start to write this review I wonder how common it is that when film producers come up with marketing tools for their releases they have one eye on the potential for punnery that could arise from the film's subject matter. I ponder this after considering how many reviewers of this film have tried to desperately come up with a pun based on something salty. If only Angelina Jolie was older you could say something like "... Jolie is well-preserved for a X-year old actress...", or maybe something about the ending “…leaving me thirsty for more”, or perhaps something even more terrible. Ho hum, the things that go through my mind while I'm killing time at the end of the working day. Madness.

'Salt' is a kind of OK type of film, a film about which I can't really think of anything brilliant to say but at the same time was an entirely reasonable way to spend an evening. Angelina Jolie plays a CIA agent who within the first 10 minutes is on the run from her bosses after being accused by a Russian 'walk-in' of being a Russian spy. She is going to kill the Russian president apparently, even if she doesn't know it yet. This is a film that doesn't take long to get going.

It then rattles along with a reasonable pace, plenty of chases and shooting and Angelina dyeing her hair a new colour. Surely Angelina is the good guy, isn’t she? Maybe, but maybe not – and who will / wont / should / shouldn’t believe her? There are plenty of nice twists and turns and guns and tech and stunts. Salt's world of backward motivations and clandestine agendas takes her eventually to a bunker underneath the White House and the brink of nuclear war – then it kicks off properly. I was pretty sure that the plot didn't hold up at the end after all those twists and shifting goalposts, but a quick post-film deconstruction of Salt's motivations and actions with my housemate proved I was wrong – turns out the writers have created something fairly solid.

As I already said though, there's not a huge amount to write home about here, and I guess that from this point of view it's a little depressing that it's done moderately well in cinemas. But then there wasn't really much out last week. The Runaways comes out next week though, should be good.