Seen at: Cinema Saver 6, about three weeks ago.
Any of my Facebook friends will already know what I thought of this one. I usually don't mention movies there (for one thing, I haven't seen that many of them lately), but I made an exception in this particular case.
Indeed, I surprised myself. Over the last two years there were so many times I just wanted to walk out of a movie, but until now I always restrained myself, telling myself that if I started to do that, I might walk out of half of the ones I was going to.
But everyone has his/her limits, and Salt pushed me over the line finally.
So sad---I was looking forward to it for months, and waited until it got to the two-dollar theater. Over the summer, it was one of two Hollywood releases (the other being Inception) that I thought might have a chance. I was even willing to give Angelina Jolie another chance.
Inception crashed and burned for me during Act Three. It could have been a good story, but it collapsed utterly at the end (Ben agreed with me that it failed to advance the "false reality" genre even an inch).
Salt, on the other hand, had me churning in my seat from the opening scene---featuring AJ gettting waterboarded in a North Korean prison. What the hell is this, South Park in 2005? Even the promise of a generous role for Liev Schreiber couldn't kindle my interest.
I could have weathered that opening piece of merde, but it just got worse very quickly. The minute I realized that Jolie and Schreiber were CIA agents, and this was going to be another movie where "romantic, heroic CIA agents save the world" as I said in my FB post, it was all I could do not to throw something at the screen. Good thing I didn't have a tomato with me. Pardon my French, but I just don't have time to watch this kind of bullshit anymore.
It doesn't matter to me what the story is---probably something about a "rogue, bad" agent that has to be put down. It's too late for that---way too late. Anything short of a full indictment for that nest of wretched America-killers just doesn't cut it for me now.
Jolie just struck out in my book for the last time. She's on my banned-forever list of movie actors. Go find something else to do, Ms. Jolie, preferably not helping a bunch of rich assholes depopulate Africa so they can turn it into their private game park, like they want to. You suck, Angelina.
Still at this point, I remained in my seat. What finally had me fleeing to exit was a story premise at about minute twenty. Lee Harvey Oswald was a Soviet agent all along, you see...
We don't have time anymore for diversionary revisionary fantasies about what happened in Dallas in 1963. Nothing short of full sunlight matters now. There is too much at stake. Given the recent important disclosures about the JFK case, and what they actually mean, this was beyond insulting. It borders on treason.
I sprung from my seat and uncontrollably yelled "bullshit!" at the screen and stormed up the aisle. For the six or seven other patrons in the auditorium, I suspect I gave them more entertainment than they got from the rest of the movie.
It was the first movie I'd walked out of since my ex-wife and I abandoned The English Patient in Austin in the mid 1990s. I'd rather sit through that twice over before seeing ten more minutes of Jolie's ghastly, snarky smirk in Salt.
But what door have I opened now? Can I possibly force myself to sit through these turkeys anymore. Well, it is Thanksgiving season, at least. And the restored Metropolis is at the Lyric...
By the way, I was quite surprised at the response to my status update on FB. I went away from the screen for a hour and came back to find four "likes" to my post, all from female friends. Seems I'm not the only one who feels this way about these kinds of movies.
Verdict: I'd say burn all the prints, but probably good to keep this one around as reference for just how bad Hollywood got, before it all imploded.
