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Can we please have a moratorium on movies setting up themselves for sequels they don't deserve?
Can't a boring Airbender actually be the last? Maybe a prissy prince of Persia getting his sands of time completely sifted in one movie? Even Mel Brooks ended the world's history after Part 1.
The latest piece of baseless presumption is Salt, a spy thriller in theaters only because Angelina Jolie does the run-and-shoot thing a little better than a straight-to-video star like Casper Van Diem.
Jolie runs as well as any action hero, and totes weapons better than most. Neither skill matches her ability to cash $20 million paychecks, which is probably what she's racing to do at Salt's open-ended fadeout. Then she'll get to the rest of the bad guys out there, waiting to be ambushed.
But unless Jolie teams with Police Woman's Angie Dickinson and they call the sequel Salt and Pepper, I'm not interested.
"Who is Evelyn Salt?" teaser ads for Salt inquired. After 100 minutes, the answer is still fuzzy. From her introduction, being tortured by North Korean captors but not breaking her CIA cover, we know Salt (Jolie) won't give up the truth easily. She becomes half of a spy exchange with the U.S., rescued by affable boss Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) and loving husband Michael (August Diehl).
Into the CIA's offices — disguised as an oil corporation — comes Vasily Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), a Cold War leftover wishing to defect. In exchange, Orlov will provide information of an assassination attempt on Russia's president (Olek Krupa). Salt doesn't buy his story of sleeper spies raised from childhood to act American so they can integrate into a nation they will destroy.
Any resemblance between Salt and the recent Russian spy scandal is purely coincidental, and gives this movie far too much credit for being credible.
Then Orlov drops the name of the assassin, a Russian agent named … Evelyn Salt. Ted is flummoxed. A national security guy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is ready to jail her. Salt proclaims her innocence, but what does she do? She runs, shooting a few CIA agents and leading the rest on a freeway chase using large trucks that we saw a few weeks ago in Knight and Day. Not a good way to clear your name.
(One side note: Salt was originally written for Tom Cruise, who backed out to do Knight and Day. The truck chase may be what he left behind.)
From there, nothing revealed will mean much a few minutes later. Salt is constantly painting itself into corners then tromping out with arbitrary twists and action distractions. A couple involve Salt in disguise, including as a man with rip-away latex face that doesn't cover her plush, readily identifiable lips. They're saving the full-face mask for the sequel.
Steve Persall can be reached at persall@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8365. Read his blog, Reeling in the Years, at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.
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