Salt Review

Bottom Line: A spy thriller more than worth its salt.
She never quite says: "The name is Salt. Evelyn Salt." But Angelina Jolie, for all intents and purposes, is James Bond in her new film "Salt," and it's really no surprise that Jolie, the only female action star in Hollywood, more than measures up to Daniel Craig.

Donning several guises while on the run in Columbia's spy thriller, she even -- with the help of considerable facial latex, mind you -- turns up as a guy in one scene. She makes a pretty ugly one, but it makes an amusing gag, a kind of acknowledgment that kick-ass action heroes now come in both genders. In Jolie's case, it's more convincing than ever because in those Lara Croft movies, she looked like an animated creature that popped out of a video game.

While preposterous at every turn, "Salt" is a better Bond movie than most recent Bond movies, as its makers keep the stunts real and severely limit CGI gimmickry. This is a slick, light summer entertainment that should throw considerable coin into Sony's coffers while re-establishing (if it needs re-establishing) Jolie's bona fides as an action star. The film certainly didn't need the assist, but recent news events have erased any objection from critics, tied to laws of plausibility, over the film's key concept that Russian sleeper spies still exist in the U.S. long after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Another talking point here is the similarity between this film, reportedly first developed for Tom Cruise, and the action-spy thriller he chose to do, the lamentable "Knight and Day." There are astonishing similarities: An American spy believed to be a rogue agent gets chased by the CIA, with the protagonist escaping by, among other tricks, leaping from one fast-moving vehicle to another on a major thoroughfare. These similarities only point up how smart "Salt" is in crafting its escapist fare.

Director Phillip Noyce and stunt guru Simon Crane, working from a clever though shallow screenplay by Kurt Wimmer, make sure the stunts in "Salt" look like a dangerous and demanding day at the office. In "Knight and Day," the movie's absurd physicality is played as effortless clowning replete with repartee that is supposed to remind you of 007 but in fact is embarrassingly flat and banal.

There's no joking around here. Jolie's Evelyn Salt is made of sterner stuff, the kind that can survive a North Korean prison without giving up the name of her employer, the CIA. Back in D.C. and married to a nice though naive German arachnologist (August Diehl) -- yes, he studies spiders and, yes, there is a payoff to that -- she is assigned to CIA desk duties when a supposed Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) walks in one day.

Nobody is particularly buying his act, especially Salt's superior, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), but she accedes to his plea to interrogate the man briefly before she heads home to an anniversary dinner. The Russian talks nonsense about sleeper cells and a plot to assassinate the Russian president on American soil. Then he happens to drop the name of the Russian sleeper spy: Evelyn Salt.

This apparently is enough to turn the Agency's counterintelligence officer, Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), into her instant foe. Nothing that happens after this deserves any serious scrutiny, but it's fun to watch Jolie's Salt seemingly transforms into the Russian sleeper agent she is reputed to be -- escaping from a virtual lockdown, dodging cars and bullets, making her way to New York and through subway tunnels to confront the Russian president, then take on, seemingly, every Russian and CIA op in her way.

All those "seemingly" qualifiers are meant to indicate that no studio is going to cast Jolie as a villain or even an anti-hero. What do you think this is, the '70s? But there's just enough doubt for the ad copy to read: Who is Salt?

You can't say the movie keeps you guessing about this for long since most attentive viewers will figure out the true villain(s) well before the climax. But the chase is the whole point.

Here Noyce and his team excel. Propelled by James Newton Howard's nerve-teasing music and enhanced by Robert Elswit's clear-eyed, smartly positioned cameras, "Salt" moves ever forward -- pushing, pushing, pushing its heroine to greater feats every minute. It doesn't stop for martinis, either shaken or stirred, or any other detours. The movie is lean and muscular, looking for action even in situations where a little sleight of hand might have done the trick.

You do wish that maybe it did slow down to consider the human factor. Salt is married; let's dig into that. A marriage between an agent and a civilian is never explored. In making the husband a problem that needs solving, here -- not to give anything away -- the movie stumbles badly. At the end of the day, "who is Salt" is less a tagline than a criticism. Eventually, you know what Salt is. But who she is isn't satisfactorily resolved.

In story terms, that is. In Hollywood terms, there's never any doubt: Salt is Angelina Jolie.

Toy Story 3 Review

I’ll be honest. In the past the very mention of Toy Story made my blood freeze. It triggered a ghastly train of associations that went something like this: Toy Story, toy shop, retail outlet, shopping mall, Bluewater, suburban sprawl, ecological tipping point, global apocalypse. The series that, back in 1995, ushered Pixar’s reign as purveyors of some of the smartest, most loved and certainly most profitable films of recent years, seemed to me vastly inferior to the same studio’s Ratatouille or Up, little more than extended plugs for kiddie merchandise.

Toy Story 3, what seems certain to be the final installment in the series, is a different matter altogether. Directed by Lee Unkrich and written by Michael Arndt, it has all the usual ingredients — squeaky toys, happy anticry, high-octane “To infinity and beyond” set-pieces and escapades — but something new too: a heart, a huge beating heart. It’s a film that moves as much as it entertains, that will make adults cry as much as — perhaps even more than — younger children.

What gives it its emotional heft is the sense of expiry and mortality that hangs over it almost from the outset. Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Jessie (Joan Cusack) and the rest of the motley crew are on the brink of being separated from their owner Andy (John Morris). He’s older now, about to leave for college, and even though he decides to take Woody with him for sentiment’s sake, the game seems to be up: barely managing to escape being carted off on a rubbish truck, they wind up in a day centre for toddlers.

At first the place seems like paradise regained, a happy-slappy utopia. New toys to pal around with! New children with whom they can have funny-fits and giggles! But those children, it turns out, are brats who whack, batter and abuse them as — well, children tend to do. As for the other toys being kindred souls who might protect their backs — that’s a joke. Bossed about by Lots-o’-Huggin (Ned Beatty), a superficially-kindly bear nurses untold bitterness and against the world after being lost — worse: replaced – by his beloved owner, they shackle Buzz and pals in cages each night.

They have to escape. But to where? Their owner no longer wants them. Their future is seemingly lonely and Sisyphean. And if that seems a lofty frame of reference, I can only say that it barely touches the epochal grandeur of a scene in which the toys, faced with what appears to be certain death as they sink inexorably towards an incinerator, whose roaring light is itself redolent of a Dantean inferno, hold each others’ hands in a gesture of collectivity and mutual love.

Waste, trash, leftovers. Toy Story 3, like WALL-E, Ratatouille and even Cars, attempts a juggling act: redefining digital technology in the service of stories that hanker back to an earlier, analogue era. It doesn’t always pull it off: too often the film’s colours recall those of a gaudy confectionery stand or are over-lit like a boring vision of heaven, and sometimes there’s not enough depth of field (the 3D version doesn’t fully remedy this).

Still, by the end, these are minor caveats. The toys make the biggest transition of their lives. And we are reminded, beautifully and rather agonisingly, about how it’s both possible — and sometimes vital — to let go of those whom we most love.

Starcraft II: Wings Of Liberty Review

StarCraft II continues the epic saga of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. These three distinct and powerful races clash once again in the fast-paced real-time strategy sequel to the legendary original, StarCraft. Legions of veteran, upgraded, and brand-new unit types will do battle across the galaxy, as each faction struggles for survival.



StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty's solo campaign will continue the epic saga where it left off in StarCraft: Brood War. The storyline chronicles the exploits of marshal-turned-rebel-leader Jim Raynor and features both familiar faces and new heroes. Players will be able to tailor the experience, choosing their own mission path and selecting technology and research upgrades to suit their playing style throughout the 29-mission campaign.

In addition to the solo campaign, dozens of multiplayer maps are available for competitive play through Battle.net. This improved version of the service has been built from the ground up to offer an unparalleled online play experience, with new features such as voice communication, character profiles and achievements, stat-tracking, ladders and leagues, cloud file storage, and more.