Salt - All Seasoning, No Steak

Aug

11

Salt - All Seasoning, No Steak

≡ Category: Action, Movie Reviews By Country, Recommended, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Action
Director: Phillip Noyce
Year: 2010

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

In most respects, Salt accomplishes most of what it’s creators intended, but it could have been so much better.

Director Phillip Noyce and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer set out to make a pure action movie and they succeed, at least as much as a Hollywood movie can. Noyce steers clear of CGI for the most part. Most of the action is the work of stunt people, not CGI artists. The car mayhem is pretty darned good. Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer paints Salt (an effective Angelina Jolie) into a corner time and time again. Even though we know she has to escape or the movie is over, he achieves a fair amount of suspense. And the ways in which she eludes danger may strain credibility, but they never trample it, as is the current Hollywood style.

But Noyce and Wimmer are so intent on giving us constant action that they neglect the human element. Oh, it’s there, but blink and you’ll miss it. You see, CIA agent Evelyn Salt was rescued from a hellish North Korean prison by Mike Krause (August Diehl) and his trust and faith in her melts Evelyn’s heart. That’s the emotional center of Salt, but I think maybe five minutes of the film was devoted to the relationship.

Here’s the thing about action. The only way you’ll care about people getting shot at and so on is if you care about them as characters.

American filmmakers are so scared of boring audiences conditioned by ever louder and more frenetic CGI spectaculars that they consistently shortchange the essential human element.

For an example of how to do this sort of thing, take Bodyguards and Assassins, a recent movie from Hong Kong. The filmmakers spend a good hour getting us to bond with the characters before we get to the last half hour of nonstop action. By that time, we desperately care about their fates.

The same thing goes for a Korean movie like Frozen Flowers. By the time the action elements kick in, the filmmakers have you by the short hairs. I defy any intelligent, feeling human being to see that film and not be devastated.

When Salt ended, I had been entertained, yes, but I didn’t feel almost anything.

Another problem with recent American movies is an emphasis on Cuisinart editing. Luckily, that tendency is throttled in Salt. The action scenes make visual sense for once, but again, Asian movies leave Salt in the dust. The reason is that Asian directors know better than to cut in the middle of action movements too much. Oh, they do it occasionally, but not all the time.

Take the scene in which in Evelyn Salt jumps from one moving vehicle to another. We don’t actually see the jump. We see the beginning of the jump cut into the landing. The action is cheated, always. It doesn’t have to be that way. If any budding filmmakers are reading this, we have the technology. Let’s use CGI in a useful way, for a change. You could have rubberized steel nets hooked to the sides of the vehicles to catch the stuntpeople if they took a jump and rolled off the vehicle. That way you could film the jump without risking the lives of the stuntpeople. Just erase the nets in post.

Another example is the scene in which Salt strangles somebody with a pair of handcuffs. Wirework could have made that scene ten times as effective. The movement could have been filmed in one take instead of being cut. That would have been awesome.

Likewise, in stunt scenes, Asian directors have stunt doubles perform the actions the actors can’t. Surely we have folks who can perform real fighting moves without cutting constantly. Then there’s breakaway furniture and glass, not to mention padding. If you want action with real oomph, you might want to start there.

Yet Hollywood persists in cheating action instead of giving us the real thing. The only time I can think of that this approach actually worked was in the Bourne Supremacy and the Bourne Ultimatum. Director Paul Greengrass is a genius at this kind of action, but there’s only one of him. Everybody else’s attempts to imitate him have just resulted in visual chaos.

Boy, I’ve really gone on a rant, haven’t I?

I guess I’m just tired of Hollywood caving into the prevalent attention deficit mentality and not learning the lessons of Asian action cinema. (No, it’s not just about two-handed gunplay and wire-fu.) Actually, screenwriter Kurt Wimmer stole several moments in Salt from Hong Kong cinema, including the ones I’ve already alluded to. But that’s not enough. Directors like Phillip Noyce need to get hip to the techniques of Hong Kong action choreographers. Come on, already. These techniques have been available for over 20 years now!