Blogathon 19/16: Liveblogging Salt

Welcome to this liveblog of the action/spy/thriller Salt. Please fasten your seatbelts because this could be a bumpy ride.

The film begins.

It’s two years ago. We know this because the helpful onscreen graphic helpfully says, in helpful text ‘Two years ago’. That’s very helpful.

The graphics tell us that we’re in a prison in North Korea, but this being a spy film I’m not so sure. Maybe we’re meant to think we are but from what they’re showing us it could be a customs warehouse in San Francisco.

There’s Angelina Jolie (Evelyn Salt) looking totes beaten up and disfigured in the face department, yet she’s got a very clean bra and pants set on. That’s amazing.

Salt is rough-handled by the nefarious North Korean prison guards/San Fanciscan customs warehouse operatives. She gets questions asked and then they shove a tube down her throat and waterboard her in exactly the same way that Americans have waterboarded innocent people around the world.

Anyway, now she’s on a bridge and she’s been met by a guy who looks like he could model suits for Austin Reed. He’s an American and he’s obviously a spook.

In a scene reminiscent of every Checkpoint Charlie exchange film ever, they walk from the bad side of the bridge (where the North Korean prison officers/San Franciscan customs officers are), to the other end of the bridge which seems to be full of US Army personnel.

Suddenly it’s two years later and Salt is working for an oil company in Washington DC except it isn’t an oil company at all, it’s a shell company for the CIA. We know this because there are little graphics dropped in that say ‘CIA’.

Spook guy is there! His name is Winter. He’s a CIA operative too.

It’s her wedding anniversary!

And half an hour before she’s due to leave her oil company/CIA job (does she collect two paychecks for this?) a Russian defector ‘walks in’.

I’m beginning to think that the undercover security in this oil company facade is completely blown! A Russian defector walks in to an oil company and he knows it’s the CIA?

Salt interrogates the Russian who says that Lee Harvey Oswald was an undercover Russian agent when he shot Marilyn Monroe. Or something.

The Russian guy says there are many many more undercover Russian agents all over the US. He tells Salt that she is one too.

The Russian guy gets in a lift with two deadly-armed American agents but through sheer physical ability he manages to kill both of them and then slips, undetected, in to the street.

Security at this CIA oil company is utterly compromised, obv.

Now Salt, who had been put in the secure interrogation room, has escaped to another part of the building. I hope whoever designed the security systems and the layout for this CIA oil company is hauled in to the office and given a severe bollocking in the morning!

Using the compressed pressure of a fire extinguisher, Salt has blown her way out of a secure enclosure she was trapped in. I shall make a note of this technique and will demonstrate this to my colleagues at work next week.

Salt has gone back to her flat (which the Americans call an ‘apartment’, because they’re foreign, obv).

She is kind to animals because she takes a spider out of a jamjar, where it was being held prisoner. We don’t know what she’s done with it.

She’s not kind to animals! She’s put her dog in her rucksack, put her rucksack on her back and now, six floors up, she’s climbing across the outside of the building! I do hope the doggie is OK.

Now she’s given the doggie to a girl she’s never met before, but who lives in the same apartment building. She’s clearly an animal-dispensing lunatic.

Where’s the spider, that’s what I want to know. WHERE’S THE SPIDER?

She’s somehow navigated her way down to the ground floor of the building, but is spotted by Winter, the suit model.

There’s a chase that involves going underground and then coming back up to the surface. That’s cunning, that is.

The chase continues and because there isn’t enough tension in the film, Salt jumps off a bridge on to the roof of an articulated lorry (which the Americans call ‘a semi’ which makes me titter like a schoolboy because ‘semi’).

Now she’s on top of another lorry. I don’t know whether this one has a semi or not.

Now she’s on the roof of yet another lorry. This is amazing. No, wait, what’s amazing is that the rooves (it is the correct word, look it up) of all of these lorries are ABSOLUTELY SPOTLESS!

God, I love America, where the lorry roof pixies make sure that every square inch of all of the lorries on the US roads look like they’ve only just left the showrooms, even though they’ve presumably driven 150,000 miles so far this year.

Uh-oh. There’s been an accident and now Salt is down and on the road.

Ooh, there’s a motorbike and it’s a Triumph Street Triple! Yay for the plucky British motorbike, toughing it out against the fume-belching, semi-static American traffic.

And now she’s on the Striple.

But she’s filtering very unsafely.

However, even though she was filtering very dangerously, she was able to get away from the CIA goodies/baddies.

And now she’s in a bikers dive, called Mugs and Jugs or something. There’s loud flashing music in the bar but we only see her in the ladies toilet because I don’t know why.

Now she’s on a bus and the on-bus TV News Service is talking about a Russian visit to the US.

I’ve never been on a bus with an on-bus TV News Service. Maybe it’s a thing that only happens in the colonies.

Flashback klaxon!

We are back two years ago again. She’s obviously just walked off the bridge in to a car where her boyfriend (soon to be husband) has a very dodgy beard and the even dodgier accent.

He seems to be interrogating her and she’s just confessed to him that she works for the CIA.

Well that’s blown her cover! No wonder security at the CIA oil company is so rubbish if everyone just ‘fesses up like that.

Flash forward two years and Salt, looking like an extra from Street Dance III (This Time It’s Tedious) has just checked in to a posh hotel.

Oooh, there’s the spider! It’s in another jamjar. She’s extracting venom from it. And she’s got lots of guns and shit and that.

Salt dyes her hair.

It’s the funeral of US Vice President Someone Or Other. And the Russian President Boris Johnson is attending.

There’s a chestnut horse patrolling the crowd. It’s being ridden by a US policeman. The horse is not on the bit!

The funeral is being guarded by the same people who were supposed to be in charge of security at the CIA oil company that the Russian and Salt escaped from. No good can come of this, you mark my words.

Now Salt is on an underground train except she’s just got outside the moving underground train and jumped from the moving train and everyone’s just like ‘yeah, whatever’.

Meanwhile back in the funeral we have Requiem being sung and the Russian President Boris Johnson is in the congregation.

There’s a woman Bishop. Let’s hope nobody bashes her. Bashing the Bishop would be wrong, in church.

Salt is running through an underground tunnel while everyone else is still in the church.

She comes out of the tunnel in to what looks like a changing room in a school but how could that be? Oh, it’s the church crypt. That’s not how I imagine church crypts look in Real Life(tm).

She takes out two US armed policemen and runs up stairs. There’s a lot of running up stairs in this film.

She takes out a US Secret Service Agent and another armed policeman and there’s more running and then she shoots out the bellows in the big church organ. The inside of the church sounds like a bad place to be. Haaahahahahaha. Sounds like a bad place to…

I’ll get my coat.

She blows out a hole in the ceiling and the Russian President Boris Johnson drops through the hole and she shoots him. How did she know he would be standing in exactly that place at exactly that moment in time? It’s almost as if she had a script…

Anyway.

After shooting the Russian President Boris Johnson, Salt is apprehended by one of the guys who was in charge of security.

She’s put in a car and driven away by civilian police. That’s not at all unusual is it? I mean, all those CIA agents and Secret Service Agents milling about and they put Salt in a standard police car with three other officers.

She beats up her two police guards and tazers the driver and then drives the car off a freeway bridge on to a rank of Yellow Taxis. And now she’s got her handcuffs off and she’s just walking down the street like ‘I’ve just shot Boris Johnson, la la la la la’.

Now she’s on a boat and Liberty Island is in the background.

Flashback Klaxon!

Now there’s a really really big flashback and a very young Evelyn Salt is being drilled in her cover by a Russian who has the thickest, most improbable accent ever.

She kisses his ring. Maybe he’s the Pope?

Flashforward to today and Salt is in a scrapyard and the Russian spy guy is there! They are talking like old friends. OMG, she’s an actual Russian spy!

Now they’re on a boat and then they’re on a bigger boat. It’s more of a barge really.

The Russian has revealed that the next stage of the plan is to seize control of the US Atomic Weapons, in his most phoney accent ever.

There’s Salt’s husband! He has his hands tied behind his back and a gag in his mouth. Oh, now he’s dead. A Russian has shot him for services to bad German accents. Maybe the Russian spy guy will also be shot for services to bad Russian accents later?

It could be a double-cross. Maybe he’s not been shot?

All the other people on the boat are undercover Russian spies too. Just like Salt. OMG, the US is full of Russian spies. They’re all Russian spies! Maybe that’s why Americans shoot so many Americans each year?

Meanwhile, the head Russian spy guy is briefing her on the next phase of her mission. Something to do with NATO.

Seems like a weakness in the plan, to me, to have so many critical pieces of the operation carried out by one person.

OMG, SHE’S GLASSED THE HEAD RUSSIAN SPY GUY AND NOW HE’S DEAD!

The music sounds like Terminator as Salt walks through the barge dropping hand grenades all over the ship and shooting all the other Russians she doesn’t blow up.

There are many, many dead Russians. And a dead German husband.

She’s in an aeroplane. There’s a guy in an Army uniform but I don’t recognise the country. From his rank badges he’s a Colonel. Except his name is something Russian because he’s a Russian spy too!

The Russian Colonel in the not Russian uniform briefing Salt. Her job is to kill the US President tonight.

The Russian Colonel in the not Russian uniform has a scar on his cheek that is exactly like the RAF Senior Aircraftsman rank badge.

We see the Russian Colonel, still in his not Russian uniform, and another man also in a not Russian uniform, rocking up to a big military briefing.

The guards at the military briefing say these two people are wearing ‘NATO uniforms’. This conveniently misses the fact that there’s no such thing as a NATO uniform.

Salt is a man! Salt is THE OTHER MAN.

Or maybe Salt is just supposed to be a bit butch?

BLOODY HELL, THE US RUSSIAN COLONEL HAS JUST BLOWN HIMSELF UP!

Salt is peeling off facial prosthetics and makeup and doesn’t look so butch any more.

There’s another comment that they’re looking for a NATO officer (conveniently forgetting that there’s no such thing as a NATO uniform) but I guess this film was made for the American audience who don’t care about facts so much?

The US President is trapped in a lift and giving speeches ‘If this was authorisesd by the Russian Government, it is an act of war and we *will* retaliate’. Do people actually speak like that in private? Really?

We’ve got underground in to a special bunker but it has taken us so long to get down there the world could have frozen over fifteen times.

Salt is pursuing the US President.

The US goes from Defcon 4 to Defcon 2 and the President has the launch codes!

Salt’s CIA boss, Winter, is in the bunker with the President.

Salt has disabled the bunker outer door and all CCTV cameras. The people in the bunker are blind! (not really, obv)

Two Secret Service Agents are sent to investigate and Salt overpowers both of them because she’s a trained killer and shit and that.

The US President has authenticated the US nuclear launch codes. He could launch missiles at Starbucks right now.

Ah!

Salt’s CIA boss has just killed almost everyone in the bunker and is now holding a gun to the head of the President.

His name is Nikolai and he’s a Russian spy too! Not the US President, the other guy. Winter.

Winter/Nikolai is is now messing about with the launch software. He’s targeting Mecca, Tehran, Manila in a bid to enrage Muslims.

Fox News on the TV in the bunker shows that the Russian President is alive! Salt shot him with spider venom, not with an actual bullet. The Russian President is alive! Yay!

Winter/Nikolai realises that Salt has turned against the plan.

Salt shoots Nilolai with a handgun until the clip is empty, and then shoots him with an automatic assault rifle until that clip is empty too, but he walks back to the launch software because there’s a bulletproof screen between them.

She shoots a hole in the wall and opens the door in to the bunker where Winter/Nikolai and her actually throw guns at each other and fight like badass fighters. There’s blood and everything.. Meanwhile the launch software is counting up to, er, launch.

Salt overpowers Winter/Nikolai and aborts the launch and a special agent enters the bunker and shoots Salt in the back.

But it’s OK, Salt had a vest on. See? Your mummy was right. Wearing a vest is good for you.

Salt and Nikolai fight on the stairs and only an idiot would have put two people together on the stairs when they obviously had a shoot out, but that’s what the film script says, so it must be true.

Salt is put on a helicopter with the other CIA agent from way back at the beginning of the film.

Salt reveals that there are more Russian agents roaming the US, than the CIA can handle. Well, going on the CIA security to date in this film, that’s hardly stretching credibility. They’d be unable to cope with Postman Pat, let alone a roaming herd of Russian agents.

CIA guy gets a text that says Salt was on the barge with all the dead Russians.

She says ‘They took everything from me, I’ll kill them’. She’s talking about her former Russian kinfolk.

He hits her, with affection, and releases her handcuffs. He says ‘Go get ’em’, and she jumps out of the helicopter in to the Potomac river.

The helicopter circles over the spot where she jumped in but they don’t see her. She’s dead. Except we see her getting out of the river and running through the woods.

And the camera fades to black.

The end.

Interesting fact. The character of Salt was originally going to be played by Tom Cruise.

The thought of Tom Cruise in a matching bra and pants set, is making me feel a little unwell.

Thanks for reading this liveblog of Salt. Hope you had fun. I did.