14 DAY TRIAL // Just when most moviegoers believed she no longer had it in her to do an action movie, Angelina Jolie agreed to take over a role initially written for Tim Cruise, and give the genre another try. And lucky for us that she did, says esteemed film critic Roger Ebert. As the release date of “Salt” is drawing near, Angelina made an appearance at Comic-Con to promote it, as People magazine can confirm.
As we also noted on several past occasions and fans must already know, in the film, Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, who may or may not be a Russian sleeper spy within the CIA. The bottom line is that, once the question is asked, she’s forced to prove her true identity and, therefore, to take on the entire world in a series of mad chases. Unlike her Tom Raider character, Salt is “meaner and harder and darker, it wasn’t as pretty,” Angelina told fans at Comic-Con when asked to compare the two.
“Angelina Jolie gave Comic-Con a dash of Salt. Discussing the Russian spy thriller alongside director Philip Noyce, producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura and co-star Liev Schreiber, Jolie, 35, compared herself to her film’s character Evelyn Salt. ‘There’s something a little off about her,’ she says. ‘And maybe there’s a little something off about me too, so it’s a good match’,” People writes.
When the first photos of Jolie in character emerged, many voices in the blogosphere asked out loud whether she was not too frail and delicate-looking to pull such a physically challenging role – and, most importantly, if she could also make it convincing. According to Ebert, Angelina Jolie delivers; and then some. All laws of physics are suspended in “Salt” and the film comes with huge flaws, yet it’s so entertaining and captivating that it easily stands out as the most accomplished genre movie of our times, the critic believes.
“‘Salt’ is a damn fine thriller. It does all the things I can’t stand in bad movies, and does them in a good one. It’s like a rebuke to all the lousy action movie directors who’ve been banging pots and pans together in our skulls. It winds your clock tight and the alarm doesn’t go off for 100 minutes. It’s gloriously absurd. This movie has holes in it big enough to drive the whole movie through. The laws of physics seem to be suspended here the same way as in a Road Runner cartoon. Angelina Jolie runs full speed out into thin air and doesn’t look down until she’s in the helicopter at the end,” Ebert writes in the review.
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