The wife and I just saw this, Saturday (31-July-2010). We liked it!
I hope it’s not too spoilery to say … they left LOTS of room for a follow-up, and if this does well in the box office, then I see one or two more coming out. Like the Bourne identity but with Angelina Jolie.
Here are few things that REALLY impressed me, but they constitute spoilers so I’ll cover them. Mostly, it has to do with the way women are typically treated in action movies and what they DIDN’T do in Salt.
[spoiler]
[ul]
[li]The chief motivation used for female action characters is protecting a child. Men can be motivated by love of a woman, duty to a leader or patriotism - but women only kick ass when they’re protecting a child. (See: Ripley in Aliens). - Salt has no children involved, and she is motivated by her love of a good and decent man, caught up in her world of spies.[/li][li]Female action characters often need to be trained, taught, or equipped by a mail character. This whole “action thing” is new to them. (See: Ripley in Aliens). - Salt is a super spy, needs no more training and is as comfortable with improvised bombs as she is with a pair of high-heels.[/li][li]Female spy characters tend to sleep their way into or out-of situations. - The only person they show Salt sleeping with, is her own boyfriend (later) husband. Her strength was not her sexual allure.[/li][li]Action movies with female characters can’t show a man hitting a woman. So female antagonists are brought in, in order to eventually have a woman-on-woman karate fight. [Nothing prevents the opposite, though. Women kick the shit out of men all the time, and kicking a man in the groin is considered hilarious.] - Salt is treated like a real goddamned agent. She’s brutalized by her captors, punched, kicked, and shackled. She gives as good as she gets, but no one treats her like a porcelain doll.[/li][/ul]
[/spoiler]
Anyway, I was so happy to see some of these hackneyed tropes overturned, that I was more then willing to overlook some plot holes. I honestly hope this both turns into a franchise, just because it was a lot of fun to watch, and that it breaks ground in the kinds of female protagonist action movies that get made.
