Salt (2010 film)

The early development of the script began while Kurt Wimmer was doing interviews promoting Equilibrium. In a November 2002 interview, he discussed on which scripts he was working. He stated, "I have several scripts – foremost of which is one called The Far-Reaching Philosophy of Edwin A. Salt – kind of a high-action spy thriller..."[6] In another interview, Wimmer described the project as "very much about me and my wife".[7] The plot incorporated many elements from Equilibrium, with an oppressive and paranoid political system of brainwashing that gets overthrown by one of its high-ranking members, who rebels due to an emotional transformation.[8] With the shortened title Edwin A. Salt, the script was sold to Columbia Pictures in January 2007.[9] By July 2007, the script had attracted the attention of Tom Cruise.[10]

Terry George was the first director to join the project, and he also did some revisions to the script, but he soon left the project. Peter Berg was the next director to consider, but he, too, eventually dropped out for undisclosed reasons.[11][12] A year later, Phillip Noyce was confirmed to direct.[13] Noyce was attracted to Salt for its espionage themes, which are present in most of his filmography,[14] as well as the tension of a character who tries to prove his innocence, yet also does what he was previously accused of.[15]

Schreiber was chosen for his "hidden emotionality" and his performance in Defiance.[15]

Initial discussions took place in 2008 between Tom Cruise and Noyce about Cruise playing Edwin A. Salt. These discussions were going on for more than a year between the pair and their representatives. Cruise decided he was unable to commit to the script because he feared that the character was too close to his Mission: Impossible character Ethan Hunt.[16] Cruise decided to work on Knight and Day, instead. The filmmakers tried to differentiate the character from Hunt, but eventually came to accept they were too similar and decided not to change the characteristics of Salt. Noyce said, "But, you know, he had a valid point. It was kind of returning to an offshoot of a character that he'd already played. It's like playing the brother, or the cousin, of somebody that you played in another movie."[16]

Columbia Pictures executive Amy Pascal suggested Angelina Jolie to Noyce, who had often spoken to Jolie in the past about a desire to create a female spy franchise.[16] Pascal even invited Jolie for a Bond girl role, but the actress replied that she was more interested in playing James Bond herself, instead.[17] Jolie was sent Salt's script in September 2008 and liked it. Wimmer, Noyce, and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura went to visit Jolie at her home in France to discuss a possible script and character change. Writer Brian Helgeland helped with the character development and dialogue of the script based on the notes that came out of those discussions with Jolie and to accompany the gender change, the title character's name was changed to Evelyn Salt.[16]

One of Jolie's requests was to rework the third act, which originally had Salt rescue his wife and son from a coalition of villains because she did not believe a mother would neglect her child in this kind of situation. Wimmer decided then to make Salt more crucial to the villain's schemes, and add a sequence where Salt breaks into "a place harder than Fort Knox" – after considering Camp David, Wimmer settled on the White House.[15] When asked if the script written for Cruise was the same for Jolie, he said, "I think that it's just been a continual process, obviously accelerating by changing the central character, but the ideas, the locomotive of ideas that drive the film, are the same. An undercover CIA operative is accused of being a Russian mole, and has to go on the run to defend himself. That's been the same since day one. The tone of the film has changed in this evolution. In the same way, I guess, as – you know – action thrillers have changed along the lines of the Bond films and the Bourne films".[16][18]

On February 19, 2009, Liev Schreiber was reported to play the role of Ted Winter, Evelyn Salt's friend and colleague in the CIA.[19] Three days later, Chiwetel Ejiofor was named as CIA Officer Peabody, who is in pursuit of Salt.[20] Noyce said Ejiofor, whom he first saw in Dirty Pretty Things, seemed to have the "intelligence and disarming sort of obsessiveness" that a counter-intelligence officer would need.[15] August Diehl, who played Salt's husband Mike Krause, came after a recommendation from Jolie's partner Brad Pitt, who had worked with Diehl in Inglourious Basterds, and Daniel Olbrychski was chosen for Orlov because Andrei Konchalovsky told Noyce that such an evil Russian character could only be played by a Polish actor.[15]

On a budget of $130 million,[lower-alpha 1] principal photography took place mostly on location in New York City and Washington, D.C.[1][21] from March to June 2009.[22][23][24] Noyce decided to avoid "typical postcard views of Washington, D.C." to reflect "the more day-to-day environment of massive federal buildings inhabited by the typical bureaucrat".[17] The opening sequence in North Korea was shot at the Floyd Bennett Field, with an extra who had experience with prisoner exchanges acting as a consultant. Salt's rendezvous with Orlov was shot on the Frying Pan, a former lighthouse ship, now moored in the Hudson River, at 26th Street in New York. The outside of the KA training facility was the Makaryev Monastery in Russia,[15] while the interior was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection in New York's East Village, where the funeral was also shot.[17] Filming for a chase sequence took place on Water Street in Albany, New York, near the Interstate 787 ramp, between April and May.[25] Studio production took place at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, New York.[26][27] While the film was in postproduction, di Bonaventura became dissatisfied with some scenes.[28] Steven Zaillian was brought for uncredited rewrites;[29] reshoots, mostly of action scenes, were held in New York during January 2010.[28] Filming also took place on 157th St and Riverside Drive in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. Some scenes were also filmed outside of Manhattan, including the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island, and in Westchester County.

After Jolie had just given birth to twins,[30] she spent time training before filming to get fit to perform almost all of the stunts herself. Bonaventura said, "She is so prepared and so ready and gung-ho, she'll do any stunt. We had her jumping out of helicopters, shooting, jumping off of all sorts of things and infiltrating places that are impossible to infiltrate".[31] Salt's fighting style was described as a mixture of Muay Thai, Shaolin Kung-Fu, and Jeet Kune Do, which was considered by the stunt team the most suitable for Jolie's physique, and Krav Maga, for its rawness and aggressiveness. Noyce wanted to film the scene where Salt hangs from the edge of the building in a studio with chroma key, but Jolie insisted on doing it herself in the actual location.[30] On May 29, 2009, filming was temporarily halted after Jolie suffered a minor head injury while filming an action scene. She was taken to a hospital as a precautionary measure and released on the same day with no serious injuries, allowing filming to resume.[32] Salt's escape after being captured in St. Bartholomew's originally involved her jumping off a building into a window-cleaning machine, but budgetary constraints caused the scene to be changed into a car chase.[15]

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) was used extensively throughout the film to create environments and elements, such as bullet holes and flames. More dangerous objects such as a taser or the handcuffs used to strangle Winter were also made from CGI. Five companies were responsible for visual effects. The two most involved were CIS Vancouver and Framestore. CIS Vancouver recreated the White House since the crew did not have permission to shoot in the building, and made a digital elevator shaft for the scene where Salt goes down into the White House bunker. Framestore was responsible for the assassination attempt on the Russian president, which combined actual shots of St. Bartholomew's Church, a digital recreation of the church's interior, and scenes with actor Olek Krupa falling down a collapsing floor.[33][34]

Female CIA officers were consulted about the creation of disguises, leading to the scene where Salt undergoes subtle changes to disguise herself as a Czech. The "sweet and caring" blonde Salt dyeing her hair black would represent the shift to Chenkov, the menacing Russian agent. For the scene where Salt disguises herself as a major, pictures of Angelina Jolie were treated on Adobe Photoshop to create a believable male version, with the resulting image being used by the make-up team as an inspiration for the prosthetics.[35]

Director Phillip Noyce has said that, due to the extensive usage of flashbacks, "there was always going to be a mountain of alternative material that would not fit into the theatrical version".[36] The film ended up having two extra versions, the director's cut, and the extended cut – which Noyce refers to in his audio commentary as the film's original cut – both included on the DVD and Blu-ray disc deluxe editions.[37]

The director's cut was described by Noyce as "my own personal take on the material, free from the politics and restrictions of producers, studio, or censorship ratings".[36] Four minutes of film were added, leading to a running time of 104 minutes.[37] More flashbacks were added, and the violence was amped up, for example, Mike being drowned rather than shot to death.[38] The ending is also different; in the bunker scene, Winter shoots the President instead of only knocking him unconscious,[15][36] and a media report during the final scene reports that the new US president had been orphaned on a family visit to Russia, implying he is also a sleeper agent.[39] Noyce has described this ending as "an ending yet just a beginning – and it's an ending that turns the whole story on its head."[38]

The extended cut increases the running time by only one minute, but rewrites the plot by removing, rearranging, and adding scenes.[37] The ending has Salt escaping from CIA custody and going to Russia, where she kills Orlov – his death scene at the barge does not appear in this cut, along with the child-spy training facility getting blown up at the end of the cut.[39]

Salt grossed $118.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $175.2 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $293.5 million.[2]

Sony predicted an opening-weekend take in the low-$30 million range, while commentators thought it would come in closer to $40 million and possibly beat Inception for the number-one spot at the box office.[48] Salt opened in 3,612 theaters, with a first-day gross of $12.5 million and an opening weekend total of $36.0 million, finishing behind Inception, which made $42.7 million in its second weekend. Salt also grossed $15 million from 19 international markets.[49][50] in its second weekend, it declined in ticket sales by 45.9% making $19.5 million and placed number three behind Inception and Dinner for Schmucks.[51] It was released in 29 countries that same weekend, and grossed $25.4 million.[52][53]

Salt received generally positive reviews from critics.[54] Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 61% based on 247 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Angelina Jolie gives it her all in the title role, and her seasoned performance is almost enough to save Salt from its predictable and ludicrous plot."[55] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[54] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[56][57]

Jolie at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2010 on the Salt panel. The actress' performance was considered one of the film's strong points.[58]

Many reviewers highlighted the coincidence of Salt's release shortly after the reveal of real Russian sleeper agents in the Illegals Program,[59][60][61] with some comparing Salt to one of the agents, Anna Chapman.[62][63] Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said that, "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".[64] Justin Chang of Variety said Jolie was "in her element, submitting gamely to the mayhem and hitting crucial emotional notes with effective understatement", and called the film a "brisk, professionally assembled, but finally shrug-inducing thriller."[58]Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars (his maximum), saying "Salt is a damn fine thriller. ... It's gloriously absurd. This movie has holes in it big enough to drive the whole movie through. The laws of physics seem to be suspended here the same way as in a Road Runner cartoon."[65]

Time magazine reviewer Richard Corliss praised the action scenes and Noyce's persistence in keeping a serious tone – "he ignores the story's preposterous elements and lets the audience decide whether to laugh, shudder, or both".[62] Empire's William Thomas praised Jolie's performance, remarking, "when it comes to selling incredible, crazy, death-defying antics, Jolie has few peers in the action business",[61] and The Village Voice's Karina Longworth considered that original star Tom Cruise would never express the protagonist's ambiguity as well as Jolie.[59]

Among negative responses, The New Yorker's David Denby said Salt "is as impersonal an action thriller as we've seen in years", finding the supporting cast underexplored – "the tricky plot locks them into purely functional responses".[66] Claudia Puig of the USA Today considered the film a "by-the-book thriller" with Jolie's performance as the only distinguishing feature.[63] Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer described the film as absurd, overplotted, and incoherent, and said the villainous schemes "would have been called off 20 years ago at the latest when the Soviet Union dissolved".[67] Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer described Salt as "commendably swift and progressively inane", saying the script was a "sloppy concoction of story elements from '70s espionage classics" that ended up not working right with its "nonsensical setups and wildly illogical twists".[68] James Berardinelli of Reelviews considered that, while the film was fast-paced and the action scenes competently shot, the plot was predictable and "the spy aspects, which are, by far, the most intriguing elements of the movie, are shunted aside in favor of spectacular stunts and long chases".[69]

Salt received one Academy Award nomination, for Best Sound Mixing (Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin), which it lost to Inception.[70] The film won Best Action/Adventure Film at the Saturn Awards, with Angelina Jolie being nominated for Best Actress, and the Deluxe Unrated Edition being nominated for Best DVD Special Edition.[71] At the Taurus World Stunt Awards, stuntwoman Janene Carleton's jump on a moving truck won Best Overall Stunt by a Stunt Woman, and the film was nominated for Best Stunt Coordinator and/or 2nd Unit Director.[72] It was also nominated for Satellite Awards for Cinematography and Original Score,[73] a Golden Reel Award for Sound Effects and Foley,[74] a People's Choice Award for Favorite Action Movie,[75] and two Teen Choice Awards.[76] The film was nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture but lost to Hereafter.[77]