Rewatched Salt, which I have a soft spot for despite some of its flaws. Jolie is always watchable, it's got some other decent cast (and I like August Diehl, her husband in the film, who is much more famous in his native Germany and was so great in "A Hidden Life" and "Inglourious Basterds").
I most enjoy the first half of the film mainly because the script manages to obfuscate Salt's allegiances, and actually it keeps them still kind of cloudy until near the end, depending on which version is watched. It's fast, smooth, interesting, and rather enigmatic, and again, Diehl is just so warm and inviting in his scenes -- although this is one of those atypical films where the male is playing the "girlfriend" role whose only purpose is to reflect on and motivate the protagonist (who is usually male, but not here). Some of this might be because it was originally written that way, but then they revised it for a female lead.
I also feel like they cared a bit about details. For example, I know which McDonald's on Front Street in Harrisburg the film refers to in a throwaway line at one point. SOmeone must have googled the city.
Some issues: There are three separate versions of the film, because the director couldn't seem to decide which was best, lol. And this shows a bit in the film's structure. I actually like the most extended version the least as it feels too pat, although there's a nice scene near the end with Salt being held / recuperating, my favorite is the middle version (the regular director's cut). It also feels the most emotionally brutal of the three, based on how subplots resolve.
Also, while I love Jolie and the camera loves her -- I am always impressed at how PHYSICAL they can make her appear, and she does great stunt work -- the reality is that she has a pretty slight build and I just don't think she could be competitive in hand to hand with men who are 80 pounds heavier (most of it upper body muscle and bulk) than her. Typically women are going to need some kind of weapon that allows for quick incapacitation (versus trying to overcome bulk / brawling) and/or they need more bulk to compete, especially in work where people are trained. One of the better representations of this is recent cinema is Charlize Theron as Lorraine in "Atomic BLonde" -- Theron has a better build, she is really bulked for this film, and the film is realistic about what she needs to do -- she relies on blitz maneuvers, prop utilization, and other things to turn the tide against men who just have more upper body muscle than she could ever have. And the film also shows how badly battered she is, even after emerging victorious. LIke, she's pretty bruised and messed up by those fights. Salt does have some of that, but not enough, and Jolie is just so thin, frame-wise. THeron has a good 4" or more on her, and a slightly bigger frame (proportionally) and it matters.
my last annoyance is more of a cosmetic problem. They do really great with her female disguises, but there's a sequence where she pretends to be a man, and I'm sorry but she still looks like a woman pretending to be a man. It's not really her (although her voice is not convincing either), they just physically didn't pull off the disguise (the costume crew). I'm seen more convincing portrayals (for example, Jane/John Doe in "Predestination" or Lyndon in "DEVS"), so it can be done; this just wasn't a good one, and it mattered because she's passing a security checkpoint.
