Salt **

Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Olek Krupa, Hunt Block, Corey Stoll

For about one third of its running time Salt is a damn good, almost spectacular, thriller. Then it's not.
Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent accused by a Russian defector (Olbrychski) of being a KGB sleeper agent sent decades before to accomplish a top secret mission ominously called "Day X" (i.e. complete world destruction).
Since this happens within the first minutes of the movie, the next hour and a half has Salt on the run, while agents played by Schrieber and Ejiofor pursue her. She goes all MacGyver and builds explosives with cleaning supplies, infiltrates top secret bunkers and thinks of her German arachnologist husband Mike (Diehl) while wearing fabulous ushankas.
The energy contained in the first part of the film is akin to J.J. Abrams superb spy series Alias, in how it builds a strong female character, hints at some heavy emotional background and provides her with badass qualities without ever reducing her to a mere male fantasy.
What goes wrong here is that director Noyce doesn't seem able to juggle every aspect of this character. He tries to make three different movies with her, one where Evelyn is a wrongfully accused woman trying to clear her name and save her husband (which gives Salt its only chance of having a heart), another where she is a fembot wreaking havoc wherever she struts. Plus another movie where she's an excuse to resurrect the Russians as America-hating villains often bordering on the ridiculous.
It's this movie that's the most troubling because its flirting with parody makes the others seem completely preposterous and incoherent.
Of course, nothing about Salt is supposed to make much sense and Jolie seems to be having a ball in the part. Besides making most of her amazing stunts her exotic beauty doesn't interfere with the insanity of the plot and we somehow still believe that someone like her would end up married to a complete nerd.
What the film fails to do is give Salt a soul and as Jolie travels seamlessly from genre to genre she does so with all the professionalism of an actor but none of the je ne sais quoi of a movie star.
For a star vehicle, this one's on automatic mode for way too long.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine *

Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston
Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, Lynn Collins
will.i.am, Daniel Henney, Kevin Durand, Taylor Kitsch

This prequel to the "X-Men" series commits the cardinal sin of action film/comic book/summer blockbusters: it's terribly un-entertaining.
Wolverine/Logan as played by Hugh Jackman was consistently one of the best elements in the ensemble of the previous trilogy; combining raw power, a dark sense of humor and animalistic sexuality.
Once you leave him on his own though, he's just not that interesting. The film begins in 1845 where we learn about Logan's birthplace and his power to regenerate as well as his relationship with his older brother Victor (played by Schreiber). Through the credits sequence (which perhaps would've made a better film) we follow the siblings through most of the wars in the twentieth century finishing in Vietnam where they are approached by William Stryker (Huston) who asks him to joing a special team he's putting together.
The group is made out of other mutants including the invulnerable Fred Dukes (Durand), teleportating Kestrel (will.i.am), Bolt who manipulates electricity (Monaghan), expert gunsman Agent Zero (Henney) and sword fighter Wade Wilson (Reynolds).
Stryker uses them as mercenaries who commit vicious crimes to get what they want. Logan becomes disgusted by this and leaves the group, retiring peacefully to Canada where he lives with his girlfriend Kayla (Collins).
Years later his brother Victor tracks him down and kills his girlfriend setting Logan on a search for revenge. He is approached by Stryker who offers to help him become invincible in order to fulfill his mission. Logan accepts and undergoes a procedure where his skeleton is reinforced with the indestructible metal adamantium.
Logan later learns that Stryker has been in league with Victor all along and escapes, taking on the name of Wolverine in search of vengeance.
Then there's a rescue mission, more mutant cameos than you can shake a stick at and the eventual finale which neatly ties up events so that the first "X-Men" movie makes more sense.
One would assume that the purpose of a prequel would be to establish things otherwise we wouldn't have way of knowing or that at least in some way influenced the behavior of the characters when we met them.
The people involved in making this film however only saw in it the opportunity to make a buck and Wolverine becomes but a puppet in a constant sequence of events and action sequences trying to top the previous one in terms of grandiosity.
As much as Jackman tries to invest something into his character, the screenplay provides him with some ridiculous scenes (not to mention cringe-worthy one liners, which they probably are using for the tie-in video game) that lack a flashy comic book feel and certainly never achieve some sort of hyperrealism.
In the same way the action sequences often come close to turning into selfparodies (unlike the cheesy glory of Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" series) that make us believe that the characters are actually doing them just because the actors playing them are getting paid.
When the film tries to humanize Logan it does so with the subtlety of a nuclear bomb, throwing in ridiculous flashbacks and an even dumber story his girlfriend tells him straight out of the "chick flick book of mythology".
When "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is over you too will have grown claws from boredom and will wish to tear the screen down.

Defiance *1/2

Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell
George MacKay, Mark Feuerstein, Alexa Davalos, Tomas Arana
Allan Corduner, Iddo Goldberg

With "Defiance" Edward Zwick proves there isn't a sociopolitical event he can't trivialize.
Set during the Nazi occupation of West Belarus during World War II, it tells the story of the Bielski brothers, who fled to the local forests after their family was murdered, where they formed a resistance that fought the invaders and eventually rescued 1,200 Jews.
Problems rise between the people as they must form an informal community while escaping the ever threatening Nazi soldiers.
Craig as older brother Tuvia and Schreiber as Zus give the film a respectable feel as they reflect sibling problems while giving convincing performances.
Craig does tough, sensitive guy like few people and there's no amount of moving disdain that Schreiber's grin can't muster, but the rest of the actors are just there to fill their Holocaust movie character quota.
The usually charming Feuerstein plays the "intellectual" who argues with the spiritual guy (Corduner) in random scenes that feel contrived and naive.
"Defiance" does get its action scenes right though, Eduardo Serra's cinematography gets you right in the battles and the film perhaps should've embraced its shallowness and play out like a romantic version of the Bielski saga as over the top heroism.
The film is worth a look if only as a reminder that the Jews didn't react passively during the Holocaust, as Hollywood has constantly tried to make us believe; they fought back and strove hard for survival.
In this raw desperation to keep alive we find the film's most compelling moments; watching dozens of people share the same plate of food, fight for it when they don't have it and face the moment when they have to shoot someone for the first time, makes for an affecting experience.
One that Zwick isn't aware he is creating, because he reduces everything to every Holocaust cliché we've seen.
Grandiose speeches before an important battle? Check.
Cold blooded murder justified because the lead actor commits it? Check.
Sudden romantic interests in the midst of annihilation? Check.
Dismissal of laws, stressed throughout as being unbreakable, just because someone's heart is warmed? Check.
The list goes on and on as Zwick turns the Bielskis into Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments" (he even has them "part" a body of water).
When one of the characters points out the irony that they are being attacked in the eve of Passover, we don't link this fact with actual historical accuracy but with Zwick's need to over dramatize everything.
Then he goes as far as making all the plot work just so the brothers will resolve rivalry issues and bond in a slightly homoerotic embrace once it's all over.
"Your Jewish sentimentality is heartwarming, but counter-revolutionary" warns officer Ben Zion (Arana) to Zus who has left his camp to fight in the front with the Russians.
Zwick's film isn't smart enough to be subversive and its kind of sentimentality (complete with real pictures of the Bielskis during the end credits) is disrespectful because instead of making us sit in awe about such an admirable deed it mostly just makes us want to look away.