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‘Salt’ Review: The Evolution of Girl Power

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'Salt' Review: The Evolution of Girl Power

HollywoodNews.com: By Anthony D’Alessandro The 1970s Virginia Slims cigarette promos boasted the slogan “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” toward their femme demo and the same prideful adage can be applied to the female action hero who has broken ceilings at the cinema over the last 40 years. In the wake of the body count left behind by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone in the ’80s and ‘90s, it’s often asked Who is the action hero of now? As a fresh crop of actors make their mark in the genre, they become too pretentious about fully wearing the crown for fear of being pigeon-holed: Gerard Butler and Vin Diesel prefer to dabble in bullets. If you’re holding out for a hero, “Salt” reminds us that our cinematic knight in shining armor wears a dress and her name is Angelina Jolie. Jolie doesn’t duck her head when labeled as an action lead: She knows that there are enough Oscar-worthy offers out there for her, even if she gets a little grease on her hands. Sure, we’ve already seen Jolie’s finesse with fisticuffs in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” but “Salt” showcases the actress’ physical prowess at its zenith with arm-breaking acrobatics and the overall philosophy that it’s better to send in a woman to do a man’s job — a shout out to Tom Cruise who was originally intended for the title role. In the Phillip Noyce-directed film, Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who comes to the realization that she’s a sleeper Russian spy after her childhood Soviet intelligence-mentor Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) outs her before her U.S. associates. Salt’s ultimate mission is to assassinate the Russian president at a New York City funeral for the U.S. vice president. From this point on, “Salt” turns into a lean and mean chase as the title character defies any punishments that her Yankee counterparts, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (an intense Chiwetel Ejiofor) wish to rain on her. Noyce is no stranger to spy actioners having hit his stride with the Tom Clancy adaptations “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” What makes “Salt” more enjoyable is that it doesn’t get bogged down in the politico-spy speak of those films, rather it takes the square root of them, distilling down to a heart-thumping orchestration of stunts, eloquently backed by James Newtown Howard’s string and [...]

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