Up & Coming Weekly

Fun Thriller, Major Plot Holes Salt (Rated PG-13) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS Fans of movie trivia might be interested to know that the role of Edward Salt was original intended for Tom Cruise …but I have the feeling that Xeno intervened, so the character was changed to Evelyn Salt. The basic plot of Salt (100 minutes) is fairly simple. An under- cover CIA agent is accused of being a Russian sleeper spy and must escape from various security agents. Behind this done-to-death ac- tion thriller standard there is very little that will surprise fans of the genre. On the plus side, this is one of the best female spy movies since The Long Kiss Goodnight. The female lead is well established and carefully developed, the computer generated imagery is kept to a commendable minimum, and the viewers are not bored. They may be extremely confused, and they may roll their eyes at the massive plot holes, but they will not be bored. Or they may, like me, sort out the bad guys and the good guys, all the tricks and most of the twist, within 10minutes of the movie’s beginning. But knowing what will happen does not make the jour- ney any less fun. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is undergoing some brutal interrogation in the opening scenes. She has powerful friends pulling strings, and she is eventually released into the custody of Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber). Years later, Salt is ready to celebrate her anniversary with her husband Mike Krause (August Diehl). His exact purpose is unclear from the beginning, but the ambiguity is there on purpose, so I won’t ruin the mystery here. It is a nice touch to the character that she does engage in some romancing despite her hard as nails exterior. Even though Jolie has done this role a few times (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Wanted), no one else does it as well. She always manages to round out her female Dying to Live TV by DEAN ROBBINS The Big C (Monday, 10:30 p.m., Showtime) joins the ranks of brilliant cable series that are beating the pants off most theatri- cal movies. Start with one of the greatest American actresses, Laura Linney, and give her a meaty character in extreme circumstances. She plays Cathy, a Minneapolis school teacher who reassesses her life after a terminal cancer diagnosis. That sounds like 30 minutes’ worth of grim material each week, but The Big C finds humor and hope in Cathy’s situation. She seizes on the opportunity to retool her relationship with her immature hus- band (Oliver Platt), bratty son (Gabriel Basso), homeless brother (John Benjamin Hickey), grouchy neighbor (Phyliss Somerville) and surly student (Gabourey Sidibe), taking the kinds of chances she never had before. By the end of the pre- miere episode, you’re laughing, crying and grateful just to take another breath. The ball’s in your court, theatrical movies. Weeds Monday, 10 pm (Showtime) It’s season six for the goofy series about a drug dealer (Mary-Louise Parker), her two sons and various hangers-on. To me, “goofy” is a problem here. I think Weeds is supposed to be at least partly about real people and their real problems, but the comedy is so broad you can’t take any of it seriously. In the season pre- miere, son Shane (Alexander Gould) kills someone with a croquet mallet and feels no remorse; he just makes unlikely wisecracks for the whole half-hour. A pro-life fanatic holds obstetrician Audra (Alanis Morissette) hostage with a crossbow while also trying to ro- mance her, etc. You’d have to be high to find much value in these exag- gerated plot elements. But maybe that’s the idea? Melissa & Joey Tuesday, 8 pm (ABC Family) Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and Joey Lawrence (Blossom) were teen sitcom stars who faded from the big-time and hit the Dancing with the Stars circuit. In Melissa & Joey they pair up for a sitcom about a wacky career woman who hires a male nanny to take care of the niece and neph- ew living in her home. I use the word “wacky” in the classical sense. Hart takes pratfalls, spouts cute one-liners and gets herself into messes as the laugh track roars. Lawrence surveys her household and proclaims, “That’s a whole bucket o’ crazy!” On paper, Melissa & Joey sounds like a must-to-avoid. But onscreen, it deliv- ers. Hart and Lawrence grew up with this kind of material, and they put it over with consummate professionalism. They get something going between them, and the punchlines score more often than they miss. Nowadays, that’s a decent per- centage. This is a whole bucket o’ crazy I can recommend in good conscience. action heroes somehow, challenging stereotypes of how female ac- tion stars must adopt the same form of hypermasculinity that de- fines the male action star in order to play the part believably. Anyway, the romancing is put on hold when a Russian defec- tor (Daniel Olbrychski) claims that “Day X” is approaching, with significant consequences for Russo-American relations. Are there still Russian defectors? It seems like they could have come up with something more menacing, but OK. Anyway, he spins a story about Russian super-spies, sleeper agents, covert operations, etc. He ends with a big finale, claiming that Salt herself is a key opera- tive in “Day X.” She immediately opens up a can of spy skills and proceeds to evade the CIA and everybody else. Her skills apparently include disguise expertise, hand to hand combat, inventing RPG’s from fire extinguishers and office furniture, kleptomania, and not get- ting shot in vital organs while jumping from moving trucks on busy overpasses. That’s awesome. Flashbacks help to flesh out the character over the course of the movie. While the plot twists are fairly predictable and unbelievably complicated, they do hold viewer attention. Suspending disbelief for 90 minutes is certainly worth it. If boredom does set in, feel free to take notes on the continuity errors, of which there are several. If nothing else, stick around for the final capture scene, in which Salt pulls a totally punk rock prison movie style attack at just the right moment. BEST. JOLIE. SCENE. EVER. COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer Laura Linney makes the best of terminal cancer in The Big C 18 UCW AUGUST 11-17, 2010 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM

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