Salt
starring Angelina Jolie, Live Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski and August Diehl
written by Kurt Wimmer
directed by Phillip Noyce
Rating: ♦◊◊◊◊
Salt is a fast action spy movie. But it should have been a much better film than it was. I was disappointed in the story, not the actors, and I was put off by the way a good plot could be so wasted. CIA agent Evelyn Salt is really one of a whole team of deep undercover KGB plants in high places in U.S. government and security agencies. In that way it was similar to the Kevin Costner movie No Way Out (1987, with Gene Hackman), based on a similar premise of a Russian sleeper agent implanted in the Pentagon. Or, maybe even The Manchurian Incident (1962, with Frank Sinatra), again utilizing the premise of foreign long-term ‘sleeper’ agents in U.S. society: hidden in plain sight, as it were. It was also mildly interesting as the film was released at around the same time that Russian sleeper agent Anna Chapman was arrested and deported from the United States.
This is only the second time I have seen Chiwtel Ejiofor in film. (The first was as Peter in the Richard Curtis Christmas film Love Actually). He is fabulously good looking.