Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
This week on A Swift, Super-Charged Kick in the Pants:
Greg and Joe tackle 2010’s Salt, a movie that’s four years ahead of its time and about eleven different cuts ahead of coherence. They discuss how this spy thriller delivers John Wick-level action sequences but with a plot that requires an advanced degree in, I don’t know, something. Is Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) a loyal CIA agent? A Russian sleeper agent? Both? Neither? The answer is yes—and also no.
Join them as they debate the critical clues in this film, like how a half-eaten sandwich and an overturned chair are obvious signs of kidnapping, why a German arachnologist is the perfect husband for a spy, and how Angelina Jolie maintains perfect hair after dyeing it black in a sink. They marvel at the 17-minute escape sequence, attempt to understand Liev Schreiber’s motivations, and confirm that spider venom is a totally normal thing to just have on hand.
As with every episode, this is the love letter that needed to happen about this movie. Also: Drinking Games, Important Questions, Joe’s Back of the Box, and more.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Joe: All right, Greg and the movie we just watched, the main character freaks out at work. When was the last time you freaked out at work?
Greg: I kind of notoriously don’t freak out at work, but I can think of one time I probably should have freaked out. Sweet. And it was my first real full time job at Baskin Robbins when I was 14 years old. This summer, between eighth grade and ninth grade. I don’t know how this was legal, but it was my first, like, real, real job.
Greg: And so I’m getting hired and they’re kind of like initiating me. Like, here’s how this works, here’s how this works. And the woman who ran this Baskin-Robbins in Concord, California, said, you know, if you’re ever here by yourself and somebody robs you, just give them everything out of the till. There’s this weird moment where it’s kind of like, wait, hold on.
Greg: What has that happened? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. During the Super Bowl last year, someone was working here alone. It was super dead because the Super Bowl was going on and someone came in and robbed us. And I said, Woody, so can you walk me through what you’re supposed to do? Yeah, just give him all the money and let him go.
Greg: And I said, what if they, like, grab me? She said, I don’t think that would happen, but if it did happen, you know what they say to do if somebody grabs you, right? It’s kind of like I am 14 years old. My paper route is my only precursors. And she said, well, they say that like if somebody is grabbing you and like taking you hostage or something, the best thing to do is to pee on them.
Greg: And in the moment I was like, oh, okay. And in retrospect, I was like, what was that grown woman saying to a 14 year old boy?
Joe: They say a.
Joe: CPS report should.
Joe: Have been filed.
Greg: And even part of my mind is like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. That seems like something someone would say. But I was like, who? I should have said, who are they? Who are the they that we’re talking about? Why are you saying this to a 14 year old boy? How about you, Joe? Have you ever had a moment at work where you freaked out?
Joe: I think the real answer is, last year, when they paused all the federal funding, I had a total freak out. But nothing comes close to being told to pee on Kidnapers.
Joe: So I feel.
Greg: Like that’s, you know, what they say to do when they pause federal funding, right?
Joe: But they did not tell me what did they do?
Greg: I just I feel like we should set off much. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. I think we need to get to the this.
Joe: Let’s get to the show.
Joe: Got to walking a defector. He’s Russian girl. Skin is up.
Clip: What’s your name? My name is Roselyn. Or love? Nothing. He doesn’t exist today. Russian agent will travel to New York City to kill the president.
Clip: This agent is K 12. The K program is a myth. Scan says he’s truthful. Guys. Don’t smoke. Wrap it up. Ever. Don’t you want to know the name? You’re good. You can tell the rest of your story to one of my colleagues. The name of the agent is Evelyn Salt. My name is Evelyn Salt. Then you are a Russian spy.
Clip: This doesn’t look good. I’m not a Russian spy.
Greg: The year is 2010, and writer Kurt Wimmer has been working on a movie called salt. Who’s called Edwin a salt, actually, when he wrote it, the script makes its way to director Philip Noyce, and eventually they hire Angelina Jolie to make a movie called salts. We are talking about Angelina Jolie. Liev Schreiber should tell Ejiofor. Andre Brower shows up for a second.
Joe: In this movie.
Joe: For one.
Joe: Line. Yeah.
Greg: We are very curious why he was in this movie, but nonetheless, I mean, if you have to choose between Andre Braugher walking through a scene and him not walking through his name, I choose that he walks through every time.
Joe: Absolutely.
Joe: Corey Stoll.
Greg: Daniel oh, brick ski. That might be all we need to talk about in this movie before we get started. This is one of my very favorite guilty pleasure movies of my lifetime, and so I’m so excited that we are finally talking about this movie. So I have one question for you, Joe Guy Tucker, what makes salts a great bad movie?
Joe: Basically everything about this movie is one of our movies. Yes, it’s a movie that I had seen and I realized I had only seen part of it. I had seen the end of it and that was it. And I kind of, you know, I was like, oh, I kind of know how the story goes. And so I kind of didn’t watch it.
Joe: We have been talking about it since we started this podcast.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Joe: And we have almost done it a million times.
Joe: I had to watch it twice over the last few days and this movie is insane. I also feel like it is five years ahead of its time.
Joe: Sure, it.
Joe: Feels like a movie that post John Wick. It would have fit right in with the action that we were seeing.
Joe: It’s also a movie that the plot is just a complete and utter disaster is too nice a word for disaster films. You know, it’s just like it doesn’t make any sense. The character motivations change from scene to scene.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: I feel like Christopher McQuarrie needed to ghost write the exposition scenes so that they would tighten up, or there was pressure from the studio around the cut and the runtime, because it’s a pretty tight hour and 40 minutes.
Greg: Three different cuts to this movie out there, though we didn’t talk about which cut we were going to watch. How did yours end.
Joe: And ends with her jumping out of the helicopter? Okay, and running through the forest?
Greg: Okay, that’s the theatrical cut.
Joe: Okay, I’m going to have to watch all three of them now. And I didn’t realize that there were three cuts, which makes sense. Yeah, I also say that spoiler alert to my back of the box. I do ask if there are more cuts of this movie out there. So at this movie, it feels.
Joe: Like.
Joe: There are many different versions that it could have been.
Joe: Sure. Yeah.
Joe: Now I almost want to pause this. Go watch it come back in 2 hours or 8 hours, however long these cuts are, and do this all again. But well, I will restrain myself. But tell me about these cuts.
Greg: Well, let me let me give you an overview of what I know. There is the extended cut, the theatrical cut. And then I think there’s a director’s cut and it’s a much colder movie at the end in the other cuts. And there actually is a director’s commentary for both the extended cut and the theatrical cut. They had Philip Noyce go through and talk about why this was in this cut and not in a different cut.
Greg: The way he described it is they made it the extended cut, and when they finished it, they thought that Liev Schreiber had done such a good job with his part that when you find out at the end that he is a bad guy.
Joe: Spoiler.
Greg: Spoiler. Yeah, they felt like that was such a betrayal that he was the main bad guy of the movie, not the guy who kind of groomed the kids in Russia early on to make them sleeper, you know, spies in America.
Joe: Right?
Greg: And so at the end of the extended cut, that older dude gets killed. And in the theatrical cut, he gets killed like an hour in and live. Schreiber gets killed towards the end.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It also ends with less of a continuation feeling. This movie ends in the theatrical cut. It ends in such a bizarre way in that it’s like, well, I guess we’re just making a bunch of these now.
Joe: I know I wasn’t. I expected salt two through nine.
Greg: Yeah. It is so disappointing that that didn’t happen because I love the ending of the theatrical cut, and I’m just ready for more salts and never got them, which is so disappointing to me. So it ends a little bit less resolved that she’s a good guy and she’s working for the Americans, and she’s ready to solve some crimes.
Joe: Right?
Greg: Mostly the ending is what’s different, and it’s how you leave with the character salt. Is she working with the Americans? Is she rogue? And you know, not working for the Russians or the Americans, but kind of out there on her own?
Joe: Interesting. Yeah. I am now going to watch all of them. One, because this now that I know is the theatrical cut. The first time through, I felt that I was watching an unfinished movie or like, it just felt like there were moments like having Andre Brower where you don’t bring in Andre Brower to have one line in a movie.
Greg: The guy was in glory.
Joe: Yeah. What on earth.
Greg: Is he doing? Yeah, yeah.
Joe: He’s one of our, you know, best actors, character actors coming through. You can tell that they shot a lot more of, like, the kids in Russia. The backstory. You have these weird character motivations. The opening scene, we meet Angelina Jolie, she is.
Joe: Being.
Joe: Tortured in a North Korean prison, and basically she just assumes she’s going to die. She’s not going to break. She’s not going to tell anybody anything. Sure. And then she’s saved by her, not even fiance yet, but the person that she’s dating.
Joe: Right.
Joe: Saves her is an Iraq knowledge. So he studies spiders.
Greg: And he’s he’s German, right?
Joe: He’s a German who can just go into North Korea. The saddest fighters. And nobody in North Korea is.
Joe: Like, wait a second.
Greg: It’s a one line fix.
Joe: Yeah. So one line fix. Yeah.
Greg: Maybe Christopher McQuarrie did work on this movie actually.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: And so they have that. And yeah, they talk about it like he just raised bloody hell in the United States with the senators and the white House. And they got her out with some prisoner exchange. Yeah. So that’s how we meet her. Fast forward however many years.
Joe: Two years.
Joe: Two years. So the present day, she’s going home for her anniversary. And then somebody comes in who’s says he’s a Russian defector and then kind of throws in that she’s a a mole in a sleeper agent. Right. And she freaks.
Joe: Out.
Joe: But that’s the freak out we were talking about, where she just like, I got to call my husband. I got to, you know.
Joe: Right.
Joe: And the juxtaposition of her in the first scene to the second scene are so completely different. There is no way that that person in the first scene and the person the second are the same character. To me, like that was the first. Like, oh, what? I know they tried to fix it, but it’s all just a set up for an amazing chase scene of her getting out of the building.
Greg: Incredible.
Joe: Yeah, I just have to say, action scenes. Top notch.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Top notch. I am riveted by the scenes that they put in this movie. It is so good.
Greg: John Wick chapter two level. Oh my gosh, we’re still doing this.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: She starts to escape from them out of their like corporate office. That is actually the CIA like minute 17. And I want to say like minute 34. She still that’s when she gets on the motorcycle.
Joe: Yeah. And she’s still running away from them.
Greg: She’s jumped on so many trucks. She has jumped over bridges on the trucks going by. Incredible.
Joe: You have a little breath. She gets to her apartment, saves the dog.
Joe: Yep.
Joe: Another action scene for like another ten minutes.
Greg: She finds that her husband has only eaten half of his sandwich and his chair has been knocked over. So obviously that means he’s been kidnaped. Yeah.
Joe: No.
Greg: German acknowledges.
Joe: Though.
Greg: Is going to eat half a sandwich.
Joe: Absolutely not. Or knock over their chair.
Greg: Now and then she, goes out on the side of the building, Bourne Identity style, to deliver her dog to a little girl who lives in the same apartment building.
Joe: She’s in black ish. That girl.
Greg: Oh.
Joe: That’s cool. Yeah. So I was like, cameo for her. Probably one of her first roles, so, yeah, like 12.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, that.
Joe: But yeah. And then, like, she’s just on the run.
Joe: Right?
Joe: We have no idea what’s going to happen.
Greg: She’s very concerned about her husband. Yeah. That’s why she’s freaking out. She’s like if they’re going after me they’re going to go after my family. I’ve got to get to my husband. That seems to be her only motivation. Yeah. In the CIA, people are kind of like, we don’t think she’s telling the truth, but what if she is telling the truth?
Greg: She has a good point, you know? So for the next, like, hour of the movie we’re trying to figure out, is that really her only motivation or is something else going on here?
Joe: Turns out that was her only motivation.
Joe: Yeah, I guess so.
Joe: And spoiler he does get killed.
Joe: Who?
Joe: Her husband?
Joe: Yes, but he got.
Joe: Her out of a prison in North Korea. He seems pretty capable and he just seems to have unfettered access because of his Iraq knowledge. This thing that he’s at the Smithsonian Institute.
Greg: Why did he call in the North Koreans for some help here?
Joe: So, yeah, he knows a guy. Yeah, he’s got.
Greg: He’s got some loose fitted, you know, khakis the way is a spider scientist would.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Joe: Don’t call them bugs. But that’s, you know, that’s his only pet peeve. Apparently.
Joe: The guy.
Greg: Who plays her husband was in Inglourious Basterds and was recommended to director
Greg: Phillip Noyce by Brad.
Joe: Pitt. Awesome.
Greg: Who was married to Angelina Jolie at this time.
Joe: That’s wild. Yeah, yeah. So it everything in this movie feels as on the, I should say, in the theatrical release. And I really will be watching the other versions of this, because I’m dying to know the full story that they wanted to tell us that it did feel the story felt so truncated.
Joe: Yeah, to.
Joe: Get to the action scenes.
Greg: So the version of this that I have is the extended version and the theatrical cut. I kind of watched them both to get ready for this, and I can tell you that the beginning is the same in both of them. Okay. And there are just a couple little things dropped in in like that first hour. We have a scene where she is a little girl in Russia at like the school that all of kind of the big older Russian dude who.
Joe: Was.
Greg: Stealing babies and turning them into Russian agents. She has a conversation with young Corey Stoll. So there’s like a scene earlier in the movie where they’re talking but, you know, wasn’t really needed. I think in the director’s cut there’s maybe a little bit more with her and her husband to talk about how in love they were, but for the most part it’s about the same.
Greg: But since we have a bunch of endings, how do you think this movie should have ended? And was that the problem or was there a different problem? Was it that we were we didn’t understand what the motivations were for most of the scenes.
Joe: For me it was, you have this sleeper agent. They spent Russia has spent a lot of time and resources.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: To embed children in the United States. You then get into positions of power right with in the CIA to enact their plan.
Joe: Yep.
Joe: The way the boss of this decides to activate them is by going into the CIA, where she works and accusing her of this. Not like sending some message.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: That’s where like the spy story side of this fell off for me of like clearly I had to change. I was like, we’re not watching a spy movie. This is an action movie. But it seemed like there would have been more efficient ways to secretly activate these agents. And by going into where she works and accusing her of this, and then putting her at jeopardy, like the plan is to kill the Russian president and then to kill the US president and get control of the nuclear codes like that’s the other end goal.
Greg: We’ve all been there.
Joe: I don’t know that going into someone’s place of work at the CIA and accusing them of being a spy is the right way to activate them to do that, because then it’s.
Joe: Like, right.
Joe: It could have just ended where they capture her and put her in a cell and the movie’s over.
Greg: And that’s it, right?
Joe: Ten minutes, ten minutes, and that’s it. So that, like, that was like the jumping off point for me.
Joe: Like so true.
Greg: That really doesn’t make any sense.
Joe: You know.
Joe: They spent millions of dollars to do this. And then this is how they’re going to do it. And then how does he know when he turns himself in that she’s going to interview him?
Greg: Well, because, Liev Schreiber makes her right. And I think we have Schreiber later in the movie, says that he knew this was going to happen.
Joe: Yeah, but he set it all up from the beginning, and that’s another.
Joe: Like, okay, tie.
Joe: It.
Joe: Together. Right.
Joe: And kudos to the screenwriter for getting us to that. You know, trying to make sense of this. I was just like really? And then the action scenes happen and I was like, okay, I’m in, I’m back in.
Joe: You got me. It’s okay. Everything is fine.
Greg: It’s a lot like Quantum of Solace in that way where it’s like, yeah, whatever.
Joe: We’re yeah, we’ve.
Greg: Been running in on planes and trains for like 15 minutes here. I’m fine.
Joe: Yeah, yeah I’m fine. I’m totally good. So I think it could have been fixed at the beginning of it by setting her up in a different way. So you don’t have the, like the interrogation or you have the interrogation, and then she just leaves, but then things get activated behind the scenes and then she’s on the run. That opening kind of the conceit of it.
Joe: Yeah, was the struggle for me.
Greg: This movie is so Bourne Legacy coded, and we had had three Bourne movies by the time this one came out. I think even today, if I was to watch this movie for the 90th time, I would assume she had amnesia or was not aware that she was a Russian sleeper agent.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And that even just this week when I watched it, I thought, what does he say again that makes her become a spy again or become a Russian agent? There’s nothing like that. Nothing. And so it’s very confusing about if she knew who. Of course she knew who this guy was when he walked in, you know. Of course she knew what was going on.
Joe: Yeah. So it started. You ask me, how should this movie end? I went to the beginning of it.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: I didn’t mind the theatrical ending.
Greg: Me either.
Joe: Yeah. Or, you know, I’m going to kill him. Yep. Kill them all. Shades of John Wick chapter two. You know, again, her motivations are she fell in love and that changed her. Yeah. And so she’s going to exact revenge on those who killed her husband, which are the Russians in this case? Yeah. And they have Schreiber.
Joe: I like the idea of her being not good or we just don’t know her motivations.
Joe: Right.
Greg: Phillip Noyce talks about how he loved this script because she is both the good guy and the bad guy throughout the movie.
Joe: You know, I mean, they paint her pretty much as the good guy because she doesn’t kill anyone who is not directly a bad guy.
Joe: Sure.
Joe: So she doesn’t kill any police officers or innocent people.
Greg: She’s like shooting people in the leg occasionally.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: She knocks out a hundred people with a single punch.
Joe: Yeah, it’s amazing.
Joe: It’s one of my favorites. Happens right at the end where they’re getting the president down to the bunker. And she’s running through and jumping down.
Joe: The right.
Joe: Elevator shaft, and the door closes and the guard last guard is there and just gets out of nowhere, punched in the face by her. It was always like a chef’s kiss of a perfect moment.
Greg: It seems like she grabs a gun quite a bit and like, hits people with a gun in her hand. Yeah, and that seems to be the one that really takes people down. Yeah, but still, it is incredible how people are just no longer an issue because they’ve been hit once.
Joe: Yeah, it’s so great.
Joe: It’s so great. Yeah. So I think ending the movie, I mean, I would love for sequels to have been made of this. Yeah. But you know, if no sequels are made, I would have been fine. If there’s kind of, you know, she dies at the end but has saved humanity type of moment.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And the way it ended was fine. I didn’t have any problem with kind of the way it ended. You assume that she’ll be fine and she’ll find them all and kill them all. And, you know, that would be the subsequent movies.
Greg: And she’s working with Chiwetel Ejiofor now.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Incredible.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: He’s kind of the antagonist through a lot of it, trying to capture her because he’s like basically Internal affairs for the CIA, right. Throughout the movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: And then two things change his mind when they’re talking on the helicopter at the end and he’s like, oh, you could have killed me and you didn’t. And one other thing.
Joe: And okay.
Joe: Let’s maybe not make it incredibly important. Life and death decisions around this based on your gut, but that’s fine. I know the movie we’re watching, so I’m not going to fight him on that.
Greg: But he’s also, like, punching her in the face repeatedly.
Joe: Yeah. Which is a weird thing. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, it seems like the first time he does that is because she turned against her country or she turned against America and and he’s upset at her. And then it seems like the second time he does that, he does it. So the people who are in the other helicopter room, they’re there to remove this helicopter.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: They can talk in regular voices. And, you know, it’s just no big deal. This military helicopter, everybody can hear each other just fine. It seems like the second time he does it, it’s to make them to, like, look away.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then she’s able to jump out, I guess.
Joe: Sure. That tracks.
Greg: But that kind of stuff is happening all the way through at the, at this movie where it’s like, what are we doing? It seems like it’s trying to be something different, and I think it largely succeeds at being something different and being just an amazing, great, bad movie that I will watch over and over for the rest of my life.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: But also, yeah, it does not hold up to a lot of scrutiny.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: What am I? So if we go back to the interview with the Russian.
Greg: Sure. Or love.
Joe: Or love, he starts talking about how they started this program in 1975.
Greg: You know, to.
Joe: Train these Russian agents. And then somehow he talks about how Lee Harvey Oswald was the first 1 in 1963, or whenever that one. And and I didn’t catch it the first time, but the second one, like if you started in 1975, how did we jump to 1963? Or whenever he’s in Russia.
Joe: And they change.
Joe: Out Oswald to assassinate the president. So, you know, and then they have an fMRI machine to tell if he’s telling the truth. Right. Which if you know anything about MRI machines, they just are turned on in a room on one person and not, you know, having to sit in a tube with things on your head and the loud banging sounds that go with an MRI machine.
Joe: But yeah, again, don’t think about that. I think it was.
Joe: Like, oh yeah, we’ll.
Joe: Throw in some technical term that no one’s going to listen to. And yeah, it took me the second time I watch it go for no way.
Joe: Wait a second.
Greg: And it’s cutting to it in like very Tony Scott fashion where it’s like we’re seeing like 3D rotations around. Yeah. Incredible.
Joe: What would this movie have been if Tony Scott had directed it?
Greg: Oh my gosh, 100%. Well, you know, in researching for this I listen to a lot of Philip Noyce interviews and he is a pretty endearing person to hear in discussion about this movie, because his dad was someone who trained spies for the OSS. He was an Australian. The OSS was like the precursor to the CIA.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And so his dad, actually starting in World War Two, started training spies. A lot of his commentary was telling the history of his family, relation to the spy craft on the planet since World War two. It’s super fascinating. And so he talked about a lot of the movies in his career, people trying to find out who they really are and are pretending to be somebody else.
Greg: That seems to be a common theme in his movies. He’s like, I realized now after making salt, I was just taking the stories that my dad told me my whole childhood.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: During The Prisoner swap in the beginning for North Korea, one of the American soldiers that’s kind of like standing behind them during the swap. His dad was in the CIA for 30 years.
Greg: And so just randomly as they were shooting that scene, Phillip Noyce said, does anybody here know anybody in the in the CIA? And this guy who was right there, I just said, my family, my dad was in the CIA for 30 years.
Joe: Amazing.
Greg: Unbelievable. Yeah. So there were just people like that around this movie.
Joe: I just saw this today on a, like a total sidebar in Top Gun Maverick.
Joe: This.
Greg: Academy Award nominated Academy Award.
Joe: The funeral scene for Val Kilmer as character. Iceman.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: In that scene, his real kids are uncredited cameos.
Joe: No.
Joe: You know, they hand the folded flag to his wife, but his kids are uncredited cameos standing there.
Joe: Wow.
Joe: In that scene. So what a crazy, because, you know, he is also very sick at the time when he was filming.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Passed away not that long after filming of that movie. You know, had been battling throat cancer for years before. So it’s a weird, like, I wonder how those kids felt being in that scene.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: For for their dad. But, you know, those little uncredited moments are only for the people making the movie. Basically.
Joe: Yeah, but it seems like, you know. Yeah, sure.
Joe: So this movie has something I’ve never seen. The Russian president is coming to speak at the funeral of the vice president, who has died.
Greg: Right, in New York.
Joe: In New York. And everybody is out there and there’s this great conversation over comes of, there’s no way she can do this. And if she does it, it’ll be amazing if she can.
Joe: So they’re like standing up.
Joe: That we’re about to see the most incredible thing.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. I was surprised by how they get to the Russian president. That’s not what I’m even talking about. She is then captured after she gets the Russian president kills him or we think has killed him. Spoiler alert I’ll let you watch the movie to let you know if he dies or not. And then she’s in the police car.
Joe: One great bad movie. Nobody gets out of the way of the police caravan. That’s carrying her. So like, the their sirens are going and nobody’s pulling over as they’re driving her around. What I just thought was funny.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: Then she gets control. She like, fights the officers in the car, gets a taser and uses the taser to make the driver whose foot is on the gas, press the gas.
Joe: Right.
Joe: To, like, go forward then to, like, put it in reverse, and then I’ll press the trigger and then he’ll like it was I hadn’t I’ve never seen that before in the movie. And it was another chef’s kiss moment of incredible. Simon Crane, who has done stunts on everything Bourne movies and and the like. Edge of Tomorrow, Rogue One.
Joe: He has done a lot of our favorite movies.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: Oh my gosh. Well, we’ve talked we talked about him on the Edge of Tomorrow.
Joe: You know.
Greg: Episode. We talked about him on the cliffhanger episode. He’s the guy who did the stunt between the planes and cliffhanger.
Joe: Yeah. So he has a bona fide stunt coordinator. Stunt man.
Joe: Totally.
Joe: You know, if you look through his IMDb page, it is just a laundry list of everything that we love and hold dear. Quite frankly.
Greg: He did a bunch of bond. He did like, The Living Daylights. Oh, wait, he did stunts and Avuto Kelly did Aliens Living Daylights and Willow. So that’s George Lucas, James Cameron, and then kind of James Bond world, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He did license to Kill, Total Recall, alien three, GoldenEye. He was a stunt coordinator on Titanic.
Greg: And then he is like a second unit director on this movie, as well as coming up with the stunts.
Joe: It’s on Hobbs and Shaw, so his connect with the guy that crossed over with our buddies over over there. So you’re in good hands with him. If he’s your stunt coordinator.
Greg: Here’s why I think he is a really key person above and beyond all of that. And that is this is a movie starring Angelina Jolie. And they had planned to do stunts where she would be up against, like a green screen. And she was saying, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I’m really going to go out that window and I’m really going to hang off the building and the plan was, you know, if she escapes from her apartment, that they would just recreate that external area, like on a soundstage.
Greg: And she’s like, no, I really want to do this. And here’s why. She was willing and trusted to do this was because she had worked with Simon Crane before, like her first action movie was Tomb Raider, right?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Simon Crane did Tomb Raider one and two.
Joe: That’s awesome. Mr. and Mrs. Smith as well.
Greg: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, totally. He did a movie called Beyond Borders, which I had never heard of in 2003, a Martin Campbell, movie director of Casino Royale and GoldenEye. I’d never heard of this movie, but Angelina Jolie’s in it with Clive Owen.
Joe: Maybe our next movie. We don’t know.
Greg: He did Maleficent one and two with her. Basically what they said in the special features was Angelina Jolie would do anything that Simon Crane allowed her to do, and he said, no, you can’t do that. Then she just wouldn’t. But that meant if he said no, you could go out on the building. We could. We could set up a crane out there.
Greg: She would just do it. And so she just totally trusted him. And so they were coming up with stuff all the time because they had worked together. And there was like that trust between the two of them, which is just incredible. That’s like, what was his name? Eastwood on the Mission Impossible movies? If he says Tom cruise can do it, then Tom cruise is going to do it.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. It shows in the stunts and what they did.
Greg: Yeah, because.
Joe: Yeah, the action scenes have a kinetic feel of let’s see what we can do. Yeah. Kind of what it felt like.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Because again, I said it at the beginning, but the action in this movie I feel like is ahead of its time and underappreciated in terms of what they’re doing in it.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: But this movie from an action standpoint punches so far above its weight.
Greg: Completely agree. And there’s a little bit of history behind this movie that we should bring up now. And that is this movie was conceived of by Kurt Wimmer who made a movie called equilibrium. Did you ever see equilibrium with Christian Bale?
Joe: I don’t think I have.
Greg: It’s a movie that’s been brought up to me many, many times since we started this show. They’re like, oh, you guys are going to do equilibrium, right? I was like, I’ve never seen the movie. So I think we should probably get to equilibrium. I’ve never seen it haven’t either. But it’s from the early.
Joe: Aughts.
Greg: And he wrote and directed that and when he was doing press for it, he said, I’m thinking about doing the spy movie. And so he wrote the script, and it was Edwin Assault that was the name of the script. That’s the one that Phillip Noyce first saw. And I’m sure this happens to just about every movie. But Tom cruise was going to play at when they sold him, and he was attached to this movie, and they were trying to figure out how to make it in a way that could differentiate Edwin Assault from Ethan Hunt and the Mission Impossible movies.
Joe: Yeah, I can totally see the the challenge there in.
Greg: Yeah, and this would have been around the time they’re making Mission Impossible three that they were probably having this conversation maybe a little bit after, and they could never quite differentiated enough. And so Amy Pascal, who is running Sony, who’s also just incredible producer, she was trying to find the dude who was going to play Edwin assault. And Sony had this problem because they were like, well, there’s James Bond, Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt.
Greg: Those are like the three most famous spies that we have in current film. So, you know, we’re basically trying to find the fourth dude, the fourth male spy to be in these movies. And Amy Pascal had offered Angelina Jolie a bond girl role a couple of years before this. And Angelina Jolie said, don’t offer me a bond girl role.
Greg: I want to be bond. So if you ever have a movie where there’s a bond coming and so she said, we’re either doing the fourth spy dude or we’re doing the first girl spy.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: And so they were like, let’s, let’s try this out. And so they called up Angelina Jolie. She had just had twins. She was in like Africa or wherever. She had twins, Amy Pascal and Phillip Noyce and the producer Guy flew there and stayed there for a week, and they just talked through the script, and they had to change the script really thoroughly because it wasn’t a dude, it was a woman.
Greg: So, like, the way that they’re beating a man in North Korea in the beginning is different from the way that they thought they should show a woman being beaten and in jail. And the end of this movie was a dude gets back to his wife and kid and says, I love you. And Angelina Jolie was like, that doesn’t make any sense for a woman, because a woman, of course, is going to say, I love you, too.
Joe: Yeah. Her husband and kid. Yeah.
Greg: That’s just a given. You know, it’s a surprise when a dude learns that. But it’s not a surprise when the woman knows to say that. And also, she was like, I don’t think a female spy like this would bring a kid into the world knowing the volatility of the situation. So I think we have to change the ending and the motivation, because I don’t think this spy has a kid.
Greg: Instead, they rewrote the scripts kind of thoroughly looking through that lens, which I think is so fascinating.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So I think the fact that this movie works as well as it does shows that they did a lot of really good work in that it still kind of doesn’t make sense, but it makes sense in the ways that you can tell that they worked on it to make sense.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: But, you know, Kurt Wimmer has written so many of our movies as well. So everybody attached to this movie, yeah, is top notch. You know, a writer who knows how to write an action movie. Maybe you could make the argument be there, kind of fall to the B movie side of things. Still written a lot of solid, strong movies.
Joe: Yeah. Good director, great stunt coordinator, great cast. You know, there’s not one person in this movie or like, I wish that they, you know, they weren’t in it or, you know, oh, I don’t understand why they cast them. Sure. And really, it’s it’s anchored by obviously Angelina Jolie. Great actor throughout Leo Schreiber. My first note of this, when I started watching, I was like, I wish I had Leo Shriver’s voice.
Joe: Like he’s just got that face.
Joe: Yeah, like like.
Joe: The coolest voice in the world, you know? And those two really are the, the they’re counterweights to each other throughout the movie. And then just spectacular moments because his turn when you find out he’s the bad guy is a pretty big twist at the end of it. And I appreciated the spin on it. You know, he’s got a lot of great scenes where he’s like surveying the crowd and he shot from a, you know, position of power.
Joe: I, you know, above that, you know, talking on the comms or, you know, talking about protecting the president. There’s no way she can get in here. And oh.
Greg: Yeah, that’s too a taleggio for I think.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe: It’s going to be amazing. It’s like.
Greg: Selling the good.
Joe: Guy and.
Joe: Selling the good guy in this.
Greg: Movie. Or the bad guy. Yes.
Joe: Or the bad guy rivals to me. John Wick.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: In terms of how often they talk about her and how good she is at what she does, it’s so good. Throughout the movie, the sell the good guy slash bad guy, slash good girl, bad girl. However you want to call her.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: It’s so awesome. Every time it happens, I just put a smile on my face.
Greg: When she gets to the church where the the vice president’s funeral is happening, and she, like, blows out the floor and he drops down.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Hilarious.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: The camera goes down through the floor with the Russian president, which is just awesome. And then she’s just down there and there’s like a big plume of, you know, dust behind her. And she’s just kind of hanging out. It’s kind of like when action stars walk away from explosions and there’s just nothing.
Joe: Yeah. Exact.
Greg: No reaction from them. That’s kind of what she’s doing. She’s just like, you know, loved it. I thought that was pretty amazing. Yeah. But then she gets arrested and they they drive her off, and that’s when they were. That’s when that car chase happens that you were talking about.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Where she’s in the backseat and she takes the driver’s seat and, like, pulls the lever. So it goes forward.
Joe: I think so, yeah.
Greg: And does she knock him out by hitting his head against the steering wheel.
Joe: I think so.
Greg: Or she then is she using his.
Joe: Head to steer it.
Joe: She might be. Yes. And of course, you know steals the taser kicks one of them out of the car. Right. Shoots another one. Yeah.
Greg: Somehow fight scene in a car.
Joe: Is.
Joe: One of the.
Joe: Best. Yeah.
Greg: And pretty good fight scene in the elevator. Yeah, I guess he just kind of kills them. There’s not really much fighting. Yeah, he’s got his, like, shoe knife scenario.
Joe: It’s definitely a James Bond reference of, a woman, bad guy with a knife in her shoe. I still remember opening scene, you know, it’s got poison. And to kick someone and they die, right? I think it is from Russia with love. It’s got to be that one, because this is all about a spy movie referencing. So there’s other references, other spy movies in and I’m sure that I missed, but that’s a from Russia with our listeners will tell us if I’m right.
Greg: The exactly two things in this movie that I was confused about. One, every time I watch it, I think she has amnesia and does not realize she’s a Russian spy because of Bourne Identity. And then in that scene, I did ask myself, why do I feel like the shoe knife is poisoned?
Joe: It’s because it’s because of James Bond. Yeah.
Joe: That’s amazing.
Greg: So when she leaves the the church or when she’s arrested and taken, there was supposed to be like a $4 million action sequence that happened after that.
Clip: She’s led not stopping here to face Winter and Peabody, but across the street to that building over there. And she went into the foyer of the building and up in the elevator with Winter and Peabody, the elevator arrives at the top of a 60 story building, and as their transferring towards the helicopter pad and the waiting helicopter that’s going to transport them all back down to Washington, Evelyn makes a move.
Clip: She breaks free and she starts to run the firing at her. And this firing coming from the helicopter, and she races straight towards the edge of the 60 story building and jumps over the side. She lands on one of those window cleaning machines and drops 40 stories in about two seconds. The window cleaning machine snaps when it comes to a halt, and then she swings out and pushes the whole apparatus through the window of the building, escapes into the building and well, that was her original escape.
Greg: And they found out right before they were supposed to shoot that that they needed to cut the scene to make their budget. And so over the weekends in the next couple of weeks, Simon Crane came up with that whole car scenario, and they shot that over the weekends to make an action scene out of nothing. Basically, when it finishes and this car just kind of goes over a ramp, magically, a car somehow.
Joe: Yeah, over the railing.
Joe: Yes. It’s amazing.
Greg: But it it’s such a gut punch. You know, it’s like if you really physically kinetic action that’s happening.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s not like a bonus scene honestly to me.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: My, my belief is sometimes the limitations of whether it’s budget or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, sometimes bring out the best. And I kind of am a sucker for a fight scene in a car. There have been some really good ones even. There was that really terrible Netflix movie with Taron Edgerton.
Joe: Carry On.
Joe: The best scene in that is a fight scene in the car.
Joe: Oh, it was so good.
Joe: It’s like the only time where they did something interesting in that entire movie. Yeah. Was, yeah, you know, a fight scene in a car crash.
Greg: And then she just walks away from it. She gets out of the car.
Joe: And.
Greg: And just walks away and everyone rushes over to the cop car to make sure everybody is okay. Yeah, they somehow missed that. Angelina Jolie got out of the car and just walked away.
Joe: One of the most beautiful women on the planet, just walking away from a car crash. No one asks if she’s all right or sees her at all, because she dyed her hair black in the movie halfway through. And so now.
Greg: I think A.O. Scott in The New York Times said he thought that must have been an inside joke like this must have been a joke that Angelina Jolie would get out of that car and walk away and nobody would, you know, even notice.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Then she goes and kills all the Russians.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: After they’ve killed her husband. And this is a major difference between the extended cut, which is unrated and the theatrical cut. They slowly drown her husband in front of him, rather than bloodless. Lessly shooting him in the chest.
Joe: Yeah. Very different.
Greg: Movie from John Wick.
Joe: Two.
Greg: Yeah, that we watch this week where people are getting shot all over the place, yet it’s a PG 13 movie and nobody bleeds when they get shot.
Joe: No. We’re good.
Joe: Yeah. The most that they do is they cut back to him and he’s got the red whatever they put in his mouth. I think they use that to act as the blood like that. That was there.
Joe: Okay.
Joe: Nod to like maybe he would have bled a little bit if he was shot at the chest. Sure. You know.
Greg: Just a skosh.
Joe: Yeah. A smidge.
Greg: Yeah. So they filmed the scene where he was being drowned in front of her, and that became like the ultimate motivation for her. And Angelina Jolie and Phillip Noyce were really bugged that they had to take that out to get a PG 13 rating.
Greg: And the whole thing is she watches it and doesn’t react. And then Orlov knows that she’s still trustworthy. But that point in the movie for the next couple minutes we hear her heartbeat a lot, even when it doesn’t seem appropriate. Like, why are we still hearing her heart? That’s weird. Did you think that the heart of rock n roll, Baby Huey Lewis was going to start at any moment during this movie?
Joe: It should have.
Joe: Should have.
Joe: This was made in 1991. It’s probably earlier than 1987 and that’s for sure. Absolutely. Starting up.
Greg: Oh my gosh, we need that. We need to release the Lewis cut of this movie.
Joe: Where he’s got to have that. And then the heart of rock n roll starts and he’s like.
Joe: He’s gotta have some sort of cameo. He’s like one of the Russian henchmen and the and the and the news are behind them somewhere as well.
Greg: Reading the news, obviously the way they did their videos.
Joe: It might be the only Huey Lewis in the news and on the planet right now.
Greg: I don’t think so. I think we are everywhere.
Joe: Okay?
Joe: We are the sleeper agents. When that song starts, we will all be activated.
Greg: Call Johnny, it’s time.
Joe: For it’s right.
Joe: Back in the 80s, when saxophones having solos in songs was just. We just accepted that as like, normal. And. Okay.
Greg: So then she joins Corey Stoll to go to the white House. She’s wanted everywhere. Walks into the white House.
Joe: Yeah, because she did something with makeup and, very shades of Ethan Hunt.
Joe: Yeah. With, mask.
Greg: Didn’t Val Kilmer do a lot of that in the Saints?
Joe: I think so, yeah.
Greg: Also directed by Phillip Noyce.
Joe: Also a movie we will for sure get.
Joe: 200%.
Joe: Because again, in The Saint, his identity is figured out instantaneously by Elisabeth Shue, but no one else on the planet figures out that.
Joe: He only.
Joe: Travels as a saint. So anyway.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Again, don’t read too much into it. You’re not watching it for that.
Greg: Well, there’s only one Elisabeth Shue. That’s what we’re saying.
Joe: That’s true. That’s exactly. She’s a national treasure.
Greg: And but if you’re on a nationwide manhunt or a global manhunt, there’s only one person to call.
Joe: That’s right.
Greg: So, yeah, then she gets to the white House, and she’s able to get down the elevator shaft to the basement of the white House, where nuclear bombs are launched.
Joe: Another one of my favorite parts of this movie is there’s, like, this big door that they’re closing. This is right where we get the punch, where she’s like, slips in as they’re closing. I was like.
Greg: Very slow door.
Joe: Very slow door. One guard. You stay here while we go in. You know that guy is in trouble just right there, right? She, of course, gets there and they’re like, nobody can get in this door once it’s closed. That’s what they say, right? Cut to after all the shenanigans happen with her and and they have Schreiber and all of that, they have somehow gotten through that door with a blow torch.
Joe: Sir. And so, yeah.
Joe: I don’t know if anyone read that script and gone out, you know, maybe someone could have just opened it from the inside or whatever, but they made a big deal of us knowing, as they’re taking the president there, that nobody can get in this door once it closed. And of course, they were able to get in pretty easily pretty quickly.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So somebody in that group should have said after he said, no one can get in there. Like, what if they have a torches like up, up up up up up up. Yeah. Come on.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Who’s got a torch in the white arch anymore.
Greg: It’s 2010. And then she has that fistfight with Live Shriver which is incredible.
Greg: That fight between the two of them is so much more rough than I even expect by 2025 standards. It’s so good.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: It’s visceral like how much they hate each other because basically she learns that he is the mastermind behind all of it, made all the decisions.
Joe: Right.
Joe: And got her husband killed and setting her up to take the fall for everything. Yep. It’s like, this is why you get great actors in action movies to sell these crazy lines.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And yeah, that action or that kind of final confrontation is great.
Joe: Yeah, but she.
Joe: Doesn’t kill him. And the extended edition does, as the way that Leia forever dies the same.
Greg: I think it’s the same. Yeah, they’re apparently in the director’s cut. There is some different way.
Joe: It sounds like you and I need to go watch the director’s cut of this movie, so it will report back to our dear listeners on the differences.
Joe: And I need to find the extended now cut as well. And see, because I feel like that’s a little bit more of the movie that I wanted to watch. I’m being honest.
Greg: Some use the DVD website is going to be like, hey, we got an order for the director’s cut of salt, and like, you’re going to need to reread that. I don’t think that order actually came in. No, I.
Joe: Swear, two guys in Seattle.
Joe: Salt from 2010.
Greg: Joe, it occurs to me that there might be some people who are listening to this. They have no idea what we’re talking about.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So I’m wondering if you could help us explain what salt is all about. Let’s pretend like we’re walking through Blockbuster Video, the One Blockbuster Video still alive in bend, Oregon. We’re walking down the hallways, looking at the shelves, picking up. This would be Blu ray boxes off the shelf that we’re looking to rent. Let’s pick up the box of salt and read the back.
Greg: That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. Who can you trust when the fate of the world order is at stake? Who can you trust? Anyone? This spy thriller is wall to wall action and suspense. No one is safe from a stray bullet or a spider, or from trusting the wrong person. Salt will keep you guessing until the credits roll.
Joe: The only thing that is guaranteed is how riveted to your seat you will be. Do you have what it takes to make it to the end? Time will tell.
Greg: Amazing. Do you have what it takes to make it to the end? It’s almost like you’re questioning if people are going to watch the whole.
Joe: The whole movie. Yeah.
Joe: Or maybe it’s like, do you have what it takes to be able to appreciate this movie to the end? Or maybe that’s what I’m asking. It’s a more existential. Could be we don’t know. I don’t even know.
Greg: Do you love great bad movies? AKA are you one of the greatest people on the planet?
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Or are you not? And so.
Greg: Well, okay, well, that’s like the straight up marketing copy, but let’s head on down to honest down here, Joe, and give us the real Joe Skye Tucker, back of the box.
Joe: I should preface this by saying that I did not know when I wrote this that there were other cuts of this movie.
Joe: So.
Joe: WTF, this movie makes no sense if you think about it. I suspect that there are 3 to 11 different cuts of this movie out there. It is a wild, action filled ride, and about four years ahead of its time. Throw this into the John Wick verse and add more blue tone to the color story, and it would be amazingly well regarded as it is.
Joe: The plot and the character motivations seem invented. Scene the scene all in in an excuse to get to the next action set piece, it should be said that those action set pieces are amazing. The action is incredible and worthy of multiple viewings. The plot is an incomprehensible mess and it does not matter. Sit back and enjoy the madness and hope for a director’s cut that is three hours long, because it will be worth it.
Joe: Again, I did not know or research other cuts of this movie. I swear on everything, but I did not.
Greg: How awesome would it be if you picked up a box at Blockbuster Video and it just started with you?
Joe: Yeah, yeah, like a.
Greg: Person on the last day of their box writing.
Joe: Job? Yeah, yeah.
Greg: It’s like I can’t even fake it anymore.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: We’re renting that movie. I think what the answer is.
Greg: Let me take a second and see if I can explain the plot of this movie.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Angelina Jolie is a Russian spy in America. She’s being set up to take a fall by Liev Schreiber, who’s also a Russian agent. And so he brings in the person who trained both of them back in the day. Orlov.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That guy outs her at the CIA. She can either escape and that’s the end of the movie, or she can get captured. Okay, I’ve already run into where it doesn’t make any sense.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Why does she go kill the Russian president even though she doesn’t really? She just knocks him out.
Joe: With.
Greg: Some spider venom. Why does she do that?
Joe: I have.
Joe: No idea.
Greg: Okay, okay. No. You’re right. The back of the real back of the box is right.
Greg: I thought I had it.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: That scene where she is escaping the CIA.
Joe: To me.
Joe: Should have been like somewhere in the second act. But in the first act of this movie.
Joe: Okay, okay.
Joe: Like, her motivations make no sense.
Joe: Throughout, do you think.
Greg: Maybe she had just been told that her federal funding was not coming through?
Joe: It’s probably what it is.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: I’m sure at that point, you started taking apart office furniture and MacGyver ING it into. Yeah, missile launchers as well.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: I wanted to. I did not have her skills, so it’s just. I just broke stuff in my office.
Greg: So why are you holding a table leg?
Joe: Yeah. What is happening right now? Why did.
Greg: You pour vinegar all over.
Joe: It? Yeah.
Joe: I wondered in that scene if she really cut her finger. I don’t know if you notice. She cuts her finger in it and there’s blood everywhere, and she’s holding her hand like you would if you’d really cut it. I wondered if it was just a scene that they didn’t have the heart to, like, take out, because it was perfect.
Joe: If you’ve ever put furniture together, there’s often those little edges. And I have had I have a master’s degree in Ikea furniture. Yeah. So I know exactly that stupid desk she took apart. Yeah, and I have the cuts and the scars to prove it. So that was a moment that I noticed in there. And like, they don’t ever show a aid again throughout the movie on her hand.
Joe: So I don’t know. It’s just an open question.
Greg: Jolie is method when it comes to furniture.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Yeah. So I think she really did kind of stuff. All right Joe should we get to the box office and reviews of the movie.
Joe: Salt’s absolutely.
Greg: All right. Let’s do it. This movie came out July 21st, 2010, in Egypt.
Joe: So when it came out, I it’s like I.
Greg: Only go for the Egypt release dates.
Joe: Yeah. As you should, because.
Greg: It had a budget of $110 million. I also saw it as high as 130.
Joe: All right.
Greg: Sony just really backing up the money truck for Philip Noyce and Angelina Jolie. This movie made $293 million worldwide.
Joe: All right. So it made made it made its money back on a little bit.
Greg: This movie made another $45 million in DVD and Blu ray sales. So we did pretty well enough that they were trying to make a, sequel for a while. So what do you think the Rotten Tomatoes score is for this? From the critics.
Joe: Feels like a 70.
Greg: It does, it does. Right.
Joe: And it might be the most it’s almost the most 70 movie we’ve ever done. But I’m going to go a little lower. I’ll go 63.
Joe: 62. So Clint.
Greg: Credible, that’s out of 250 reviews. But what do you think the popcorn meter is on this? The audience score for salt.
Joe: It’s got to be higher. I’ll go 75.
Joe: It’s 59.
Joe: Really? Yeah. I feel like the audience is missing something here.
Joe: Agreed.
Joe: Because this movie. Yes, there are gaping plot holes. But if you’re watching this movie. Yeah, for like a cogent, consistent plot.
Joe: Then.
Joe: This is this is not the movie for you. That’s not the genre for you at all. Like just sit back and enjoy the madness that is happening on screen.
Greg: Angelina Jolie is just unbelievable in this movie. Yeah, watch it for her. Running and jumping and kicking and shooting.
Joe: It’s running up the wall and punching people as she does.
Greg: Oh my gosh.
Joe: So many times that happened. That’s great.
Greg: Is that a good move? I could never decide if that’s a good move or not. Does that really help or does it just look awesome? Do we know?
Joe: I think it looks awesome. And yeah, it helped in this movie. So yes, it works.
Greg: Yeah. Agreed. Well, let’s talk about what some of the critics said about this movie. We always start with our hometown paper, a guy named Ted Fry wrote about this movie.
Joe: In.
Greg: July of 2010. Ted fry says the relentless pace, hair raising stunts and air of affected gravitas also goes a long way in boosting salt, a run above much of this summer’s other multiplex fare as a top notch action thriller. Three out of four.
Joe: Stars absolutely.
Joe: Air of affected gravitas could be, probably a much better title for this show than we deserve.
Greg: That’s so much better. That is three rungs above.
Joe: Yeah, what the show deserves.
Greg: A.O. Scott from The New York Times says, it all happens in such a frenzy of momentum, and on the fly exposition that some of the more preposterous elements in the story will strike you only in retrospect. Three out of five stars.
Joe: Absolutely. I agree with everything.
Joe: There.
Greg: A.O. Scott and his friends call him Tony. Tony, Scott. Yeah. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian says it’s pacey, smart, subversive and knocked out with such verve and attack that you’re not in the least bit bothered by how far fetched it all is occurring. Four out of five stars Adam Woodward from Little White Lies says by no means a classic, but nonetheless a job well done.
Greg: Three out of five stars.
Joe: Also, another great name, probably a better name for this podcast than the the gravitas one.
Greg: Nigel Andrews from the Financial Times says the film is fluff, nonsense and artful tomfoolery all at the speed of sound. Four out of five.
Joe: Stars.
Joe: I agree with that too.
Greg: Fluff, nonsense and artful tomfoolery. Definitely a rejected title for this podcast.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: News of the world says she’s a very good character trapped in a quite good movie.
Joe: Yeah, I like that.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: The New Yorker David Denby says, I can’t say if this nicely crafted nonsense will sell as a franchise, but I know that I miss the unpretentious ness of the Bourne movies.
Joe: Yeah. Was this pretentious?
Joe: I didn’t get an air of pretension about it.
Greg: So maybe he’s comparing it to the Bourne movie and saying this is unpretentious and pretty good.
Joe: Yeah. All right. Yeah. All right.
Greg: Nicely crafted nonsense. Pretty good title right there.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: David Edelstein of the New York Magazine says salt is a senseless blast.
Joe: That might be the best title for this show ever.
Joe: And a lot for this.
Joe: I know for this movie. Why didn’t we do salt like.
Joe: Two years ago?
Greg: The quality of a great bad movie could possibly be determined by how many podcast titles we get from the reviews.
Joe: I agree with that 100%.
Greg: Just a couple more. Washington Post says salt a ludicrous but somehow credible spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie, delivers a swift, supercharged kick in the pants. Three out of four stars.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Detroit News says salt is a smart, fast, breathless blast of a spy flick that emulates the Bourne films in all the right ways. B-plus.
Joe: Perfect.
Greg: We’re going to go out with Andrew O’Hare from Salon.com. Andrew says salt is a well greased, smoothly functioning machine that drives forward with tremendous momentum, elevating your pulse rate and relieving you of the need to think for more than a second or two at a stretch.
Joe: You understand all of these reviews are dead on for this movie.
Greg: Yeah, they totally get it right.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe: They know it’s not trying to be something highbrow, right? And they’re just enjoying the mayhem that is on the screen.
Greg: Do you think they were taking it a little bit more seriously? Because Phillip Noyce had made Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger? He had also made Rabbit Proof Fence in 2002, which was, or 2003, which was a really well-regarded drama. Yes, it did Dead Calm, which was the first movie I ever saw with Nicole Kidman.
Joe: Oh yeah, that’s right, I.
Greg: Think Sam Neill.
Joe: I think so, I think the fact that so many strong people are attached to this movie. Yeah, even just Angelina Jolie, Leo Schreiber, Phillip Noyce being attached to this gives it an ear of you’re in good hands. That’s what I felt like. You know, even though there’s a lot of craziness that you kind of have to overlook what they do.
Joe: Well, they stick the landing on.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: It allows me to. Just like I don’t. That’s okay. Yeah. There’s massive plot holes in the character motivation then.
Joe: I didn’t even put together like why is she going to try to kill the Russian president. There’s no reason at all for that other than we have a cool action scene.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: And apparently that’s all I need.
Joe: To be like I don’t know, I don’t I don’t need anything else.
Joe: You’re going to do something cool. It can do something amazing. Okay. I’m in.
Greg: I questioned what she was doing many times in this movie. Now that I think of it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: The only place where this movie really went wrong was when you thought a Huey Lewis song was going to come on, and then it didn’t. Yeah, exactly. Was perfect in every way.
Joe: I agreed.
Greg: All right, Joe, should we move on to drinking games?
Joe: I cannot wait to hear your drinking games. Okay, we’re starting with our stop drinking games again. Doesn’t have to be alcohol. Could be water, coffee, juice, a smoothie. I’m all in on smoothies to start my day. So, as Mara MacDonald says, if you’ve got a drink in your hand, it’s a drinking game.
Joe: You know.
Joe: We start with a silent helicopter or low flying helicopter. You have a conversation on a helicopter. There’s a couple different helicopter moments, and we almost have a Tony Scott of helicopters in this.
Joe: Whoa.
Joe: If you count the fact that the third helicopter is filming the other two helicopters in frame, then you do have a Tony Scott of helicopters, but only two appear on frame. Disappointing in my point of view on this. They should have just gotten four helicopters.
Greg: Tony Scott would have had 18 cameras on the ground to film all three of them that were flying by and dressed. The one that was the camera to be a news one, probably.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, like news for, you know.
Joe: Totally missed opportunity for a Tony Scott of helicopters. But you do get to and then a conversation on a helicopter at the end. So glorious where they don’t have headphones or like anything on to be able to hear each other. But they’re they are having a very quiet conversation.
Greg: It’s great. Such a delight. I love it.
Joe: Do we have a push in and enhance? I gave this one to us because while in the interview, while she is interviewing the Russian defector. Why, I can never remember his character’s name. I don’t know.
Greg: Or love.
Joe: Or live on the on the computer. They’re doing a lot of bringing up his history and showing his, you know, picture next to Brezhnev and 19, whatever.
Joe: Yep.
Joe: You know, so there’s a lot of that. When two people share a slow motion look to the middle of chaos. Oh, there’s some great moments when she’s jumping from running after she gets out of the building and she’s jumping from car to car, and then they’re chasing her in the car and, like, locking eyes. And then they he she gets shot or grazed by a bullet.
Joe: But there are moments where, you know, the driver will say, you know, Evelyn, what are you doing? Like, she can hear him 100 yards away as he’s in a car and she’s on top of a delivery van or whatever she’s on. Yeah, at that moment. So it’s great. We do have an explosion with silent suffering and ringing in the ears is when the Russian president falls through.
Joe: Amazing.
Joe: Opening credits. Seeing the title lock in place with the sound, the score drops out when the title comes through.
Greg: Are you.
Joe: Sure? Sort of a little bit. Maybe you make the person to the left of you have a drink on that one.
Joe: Yeah. Okay.
Joe: Lots of flashbacks and flashbacks. Not necessarily flashbacks to dialog, but flashbacks to Russia and flashbacks to conversations that have happened throughout.
Greg: So in the past.
Joe: Yes. Yeah.
Joe: There are a couple bad CGI moments, but I didn’t flag this one because for the most part, the stunts are all practical and, you know, so there there are a couple moments where, especially when she’s in the elevator shaft jumping down, that it’s very clear that they’re wires and, and green screens around her.
Greg: But I don’t think that was actually a shaft.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Everything that looks like a shaft. There was digital effects.
Joe: Again, you’re building to the end of the movie. Kind of give it a pass.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: Great. Bad shots are everywhere. Everywhere so great that they shoot her, graze her, and then really? And then we have a spoiler alert for the tropes, her getting medical care because of this. And and, you know, in some bathroom where she knocks what has, like maxi pads off the wall and put the maxi pad on.
Joe: The bullet wound. Yep.
Joe: And then then she’s perfectly fine after that.
Greg: So why doesn’t that happen in every movie?
Joe: Yeah, I don’t know.
Joe: It should. Yeah.
Joe: We don’t have a female lead to. And probably Angelina Jolie thing in every women’s bathroom there. Yeah. These options, because men don’t know these things.
Greg: Sounds ridiculous.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Are the streets inexplicably wet? Greg. So I don’t ask you.
Greg: I think they.
Joe: Were. Yeah.
Joe: Especially in the opening scene when they are doing the prisoner exchange across the bridge. Those streets are so watered down.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: So I don’t remember it in the, car chase, which is usually where you see it or at night. But we didn’t have a lot of those scenes in this. We do not have a give us the room or Interpol surprising. And we sort of have a cell phone smash where I think she takes the.
Greg: SIM card.
Joe: The SIM card out, and then we also have them putting the cell phones away during the interview. And in a lockbox, which is the same exact.
Joe: But, you know.
Greg: She doesn’t break the phone. She actually just pulls the SIM card out and cuts the, like breaks that in half.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Which I think is what they’re doing when they break it in the phone in half.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Really all they have to do is take out the SIM card.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So again just showing how it’s really done.
Joe: Yeah exactly. So those are I start drinking games I toss it to you Greg sweetheart what is your first drinking game that you found with this movie?
Greg: Any time we see a huge spider.
Joe: Take a drink.
Joe: I have one very similar, which is anytime they say spider.
Greg: Oh. That’s solid. Okay.
Joe: Or acknowledges.
Joe: You know. Yep.
Joe: Which is a thing. It’s a real thing.
Joe: Yeah. Don’t question.
Joe: It.
Greg: It’s how I got it in North Korea.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: I was all over that border. Anytime we see first person like the camera is a first person perspective from one of our characters.
Joe: Oh that’s awesome. And there are some great handheld shots in this movie.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: I love a Steadicam, a good Steadicam, but there’s something about the handheld where the camera is shaking and you kind of that, as you say, that first person. Yeah. Shot. I just love that so much. Anytime she takes a gun from someone.
Joe: Oh, nice.
Greg: Anytime someone is looking at a person’s history and at a certain date, they find out that that person didn’t exist.
Joe: Take a drink. That’s so good.
Joe: Anytime she runs up a wall and then punches someone’s drink.
Greg: That’s three drinking games from now on my list. So I’m going to cross that out. But I will have anytime someone is quickly knocked out with one punch.
Joe: Oh, awesome. That’s also in our trope.
Joe: So yeah.
Joe: I have. Anytime you question the motivations of salt in this movie.
Joe: Take a drink.
Greg: Let me tell you my next one. Any time you say wait, why is she doing that so often?
Joe: Yep.
Joe: Any time she jumps off of a moving vehicle, take a drink.
Greg: Yeah. She jumps off the subway onto the platform.
Joe: Off of a car or onto another car?
Greg: Truck on a.
Joe: Truck? Yeah.
Greg: Bridge onto a truck.
Joe: So many.
Greg: What if she steps off ground onto the truck? That’s moving.
Joe: I think you probably have to drink on that one.
Joe: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I.
Greg: I agree with that. That was a test, and you pass.
Joe: Okay, good.
Greg: My next one is anytime somebody throws a gun when it’s out of bullets.
Joe: So accurate with those throws too.
Joe: Yeah. It’s. Yeah.
Joe: Amazing. Anytime she’s reading the map of old subway tunnels, take a drink.
Greg: You love it. I’m out.
Joe: I have a couple others. Anytime she makes a bomb out of nothing. Which happens in the opening scene and just on the subway.
Joe: The other one I have, they have a couple of these are our leave. Schreiber surveying the scene. So it’s him in the church when the presidents are giving their speeches. Before that, there’s a few different moments where he’s like a large crowd in front of him, and then shots of her leaving the United States, I notice. So she’s on a ferry and she’s looking at the Statue of Liberty, and she’s going to kill the Russians.
Joe: I think at that point.
Joe: Is.
Greg: She leaving the United States?
Joe: Well, that you’re.
Joe: Questioning her motivations like that. Like leaving a monument to the United States. And then at the end, she’s on the helicopter and the helicopters flying away from the Washington Monument. Yeah. So there’s, like, this weird little parallels that they have of her leaving. And then my last one is anytime they say the word mole, take a drink.
Greg: That’s a good amazing. Okay, Joe, there are a lot of tropes that happened during this. And we could talk about this all night, but we would like to gather them all into a speed round called Joe’s Trope Lightning Round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: Awesome. And again, thanks to our dear friend Moira MacDonald. The difference between a trope and drinking game is if you have a drink in your hand. Yep. So don’t question it and just go with it. So first one, the name of the movie is said by a character. Her character’s name is salt. The movie’s name, the salt. You have a $300 haircut moment, so she dies.
Joe: Her hair from blond to black, and it looks perfect afterwards. Friend or colleague. Usually, and especially 80s action movies, a person of color who dies early in the film. So in this case, it would be her husband who dies halfway through, at least in the firat theatrical release.
Joe: And.
Joe: Provides her with motivation finding out a critical piece of information right at the end. So we have Schreiber giving like a speech kind of would count for that. And also the Russian, when she’s on the the boat and she gets the information on where to meet, what’s his name, who gets her into the white House. We have a duffel bag full of guns that she has laid out.
Joe: One of your favorite tropes. We may need to find another. Another word for like the three five, five has this where there’s just like all of her guns are laid out on the bed.
Greg: She lays them out in such a cool way too.
Joe: Yeah, it looks awesome.
Greg: And she’s like throwing them and she’s doing it really fast like that.
Greg: I bet she packs like that because you know actors need to travel all the time. Yeah I like I think I need to start packing that way. Yeah. Making sure I have everything with guns. With guns. Yeah. It was pretty awesome.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: We have a bulletproof vest Jack where she got shot. And then they find a that she’s been has a bulletproof vest, amazing recovery time, medical care from a loved one or a partner, or in this case, and in a women’s bathroom. She steals clothes. She’s going to the hotel. You know, that fit perfectly. Kind of have downloading a file under pressure as they are getting the nuclear codes all set up.
Joe: And it’s, you know, we see the percentages going up. Yep. And then checking to see if a gun is loaded. And there’s one that I’ve missed here that you talked about right before this. Basically lots of people get punched or hit once and they just disappear from the movie. After that though, it’s it’s perfect in every way. So that’s our trope.
Joe: Lightning round.
Greg: It would be so funny if they cut to like all the children of the people who.
Joe: Were.
Greg: Knocked out forever with one punch.
Joe: Yeah, dad.
Greg: Couldn’t even take one.
Joe: Punch.
Greg: All right, Joe, there are some elephants in the room that we need to talk about from assaults in 2010. Should we get to important questions?
Joe: Absolutely. I’m so excited to hear some of your answers on there.
Greg: So what year do you think you saw this movie? You think you saw it back then.
Joe: It was just on TV. It wasn’t. It was probably like 3 or 4 years after it came out.
Greg: So our first important question is, did it hold up then?
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: It held up then.
Greg: I mean, I kind of feel like we could use a born movie like this every year to be honest.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Agreed.
Greg: Does it hold up now?
Joe: Yeah it does.
Joe: I think in some ways it holds up better as an action movie than it did then. I don’t know that it was appreciated or still, I feel like it’s underappreciated. Yeah. And I would hold this with, you know, any of the Bourne movies and really any of the John Wick movies as comparable in terms of what it’s doing.
Joe: Other than that from an action perspective?
Greg: Yeah, I totally it’s a lot like Quantum of Solace to me, which I said before, but Simon Crane did both of the movies.
Joe: Yeah. So he was just killing it. Yeah. All right.
Greg: How hard do they sell the good guy in this movie? Joe?
Joe: Really a lot throughout this movie. Is she good as she bad? We don’t know, but they really, at every moment talk about her. There’s a moment after the interrogation and she’s running away from everyone. She’s like, get me everything on my handheld. And then there’s, you know, a list of how competent she is and all these different ways, you know, and there’s I think top of the list is like hand-to-hand combat and those sorts of things.
Joe: So it’s like, and just that scene of like, if she’s going to do this, it’s going to be amazing.
Greg: And then that’s the real one right there.
Joe: That’s the one. It’s like, as they said that, I was like, oh, what is going to happen? It better be good. And it was it was amazing.
Joe: Totally nailed it.
Greg: How hard they saw the bad guy.
Joe: Do we know who the bad guy is? It kind of moves around. So I was like, there’s a moving target even in the different versions of that.
Greg: So if it’s all Orlov, they do a little bit like he was high up back in the day. Yeah, yeah, but not really. Joe, why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: For the theatrical release, apparently, it’s her entire motivation to get revenge. Is her. Her love of her husband turns her bitter heart from a Russian mole into someone that will exact.
Joe: Revenge on.
Joe: Those who did her wrong. So that is why there’s romance.
Joe: In this movie.
Joe: Oh wow.
Greg: You are okay with this one?
Joe: Barely.
Joe: But as he dies.
Joe: Yeah, he dies.
Joe: Because love is that. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: Well, that brings me to my next important question for you. Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: I can’t see it work or not.
Greg: Are we worse people if we.
Joe: Prefer the.
Greg: Extended cut?
Joe: I don’t think so. I think we’re destined to, you know, whatever universe that is, whatever parallel universe where, you know, or bad people.
Greg: So I think you shouldn’t answer that question until you’ve seen it. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, that’s that’s fine. Okay, okay.
Joe: But we’ll hold my answer till, until I’ve seen it.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Joe very important question. Does this movie deserve a sequel?
Joe: Yes.
Joe: Oh my God, it deserves so many sequels. Yes. There’s so many movies that are worse, that get so many more sequels. This movie should at least have one. It’s not two sequels to me. It’s not great.
Greg: They wrote one, sent it to Angelina Jolie. She rejected it. They hired another screenwriter to take a pass on it, and it just never happened. Philip Noyce was ready to do it and his story kind of changed over time, where he went from very excited to continue the story.
Joe: There’s a lot more.
Greg: Evelyn Saul story to tell. And then he released the director’s cut and said, this is my absolute statement, unsolved to somebody else. If they want to make another one, someone else needs to make it.
Joe: Well, where’s Chad Stahelski coming in to make this one? I mean, right.
Greg: Yeah, totally. So my answer to that is 1,000%.
Joe: We.
Greg: Were wronged by not getting us not to.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: Just call it.
Joe: Salts. Yeah.
Greg: Does this movie deserve a prequel though? Different question.
Joe: I’m usually completely anti prequel, but I would totally watch her getting into the CIA and why she ended up in the North Korean prison.
Joe: Oh yeah.
Joe: There’s got to be a cool story there. Yes, and we have a two year break after that. So yeah, there is time to build in a full action movie that concludes right before salt starts.
Joe: Yep.
Joe: I can’t believe I’m saying that.
Joe: But yeah.
Greg: I had no. And you convinced me.
Joe: Okay, sweet.
Greg: One of those time periods could be a three season Netflix series.
Joe: A great.
Greg: And Simon Crane did Rogue One so he knows how to do.
Joe: Yeah, a.
Greg: Little snippet between two stories.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So we’re good?
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: We’re good.
Greg: All right. Interesting question this week when it comes to the Oscars, Joe, my first question is should salt have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars? But before you answer.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: We are running into a very funny thing that I think is going to continue happening as our show goes on. We’ve already reviewed a movie from 2010. Awesome caveat we were not asking this question yet, so we need to go on a little sidebar. Okay, about a little movie called unstoppable from 2010. Crap.
Greg: We did not know to ask this question when we did unstoppable, which, by the way, is one of the two movies we have given our highest honor to which is a great, great movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: First question should unstoppable have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars?
Joe: Okay, so I will also at some point need to know what else was nominated that year. My my gut reaction is, yes, it should have been.
Greg: All right. Let me give you the movies. The King’s Speech, which was the winner okay.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, Black Swan okay.
Greg: The fighter inception okay. So we have already talked about these Oscars.
Joe: You guys.
Greg: The kids are all right. Hundred and 27 hours.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: The Social Network, Toy Story three, True Grit and Winter’s Bone ten nominees. So to add a movie, we have to drop one.
Joe: This is a tough one. Okay. Yeah, I will drop 127 hours.
Joe: Okay. Sure.
Joe: And I will easily slide in. Unstoppable. Yeah. Into that.
Joe: Okay. Sure.
Joe: I don’t think I can add salt to this list as much as I want to.
Joe: Okay, okay. But like.
Joe: By proxy or in absentia, let’s add unstoppable to this list and get rid of 127 hours. What do you think? What does it. What do you. How are you?
Greg: I did not see this going this direction.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: But I did have my eye on 127 hours as well. I think it’s just because, Slumdog Millionaire one, the year before, although 127 hours. Kind of an amazing movie. On paper, that movie doesn’t seem like it’s going to be good. And it was an emotional journey. But the rest of the movies on this list are really good movie.
Greg: I’m actually, you know what, The Fighter, I might I might take off the fighter and put salt.
Joe: I can I would be, you know, I know that there are great there are great performances in that movie. It’s been a really, really long time that I’ve seen that. So I don’t have a like it’s not fresh in my head, but it’s it’s a movie that. Yeah, it’s I would be fine with that too.
Greg: I was a little bit on the fence about the Fighter being nominated for Best Picture that year, so I feel like I in retrospect, I have watched salt many, many more times than I have watched The Fighter.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So if that means anything.
Joe: It.
Joe: Might mean it needs to be nominated in your mind.
Greg: In my mind, I think salt is being added.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I am very stressed out about other 2010 movies we may be watching and what we’re going to do with this list, but I also think it’s going to be really entertaining to see what great Bad Movies does to the history of the.
Joe: Oscars as.
Greg: We continue the show. So next important question for you, Joe. How can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Greg: All right, it’s a Joe. It’s the next night. We’re we’re jumping ahead 24 hours.
Joe: That’s right.
Greg: Something happened last night. There was suddenly beeping behind you while we were. We were recording. We’re going through some very important questions.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: What happened over there?
Joe: Yeah. So, apparently I live in Seattle and I live in an apartment building, and Seattle City Lights was doing some work on the building, and they had warned us of this. I was paying no attention to the fliers everywhere I plastered. Yeah, but the date and the time of when this is going to happen. But they did some maintenance and basically the power was out for like three hours here.
Joe: I woke up, I was woken up by all my lights coming on and the same time.
Joe: Oh my God, that was like.
Joe: 130 or 2 in the morning. Yeah. And so it kind of disrupted our, our recording. So we have done a good job of getting to the right level of tipsy. I have at least on my side. So sure, you know, we can keep the energy at the same place for usually you guys are sliding into the.
Greg: End of these.
Joe: And.
Joe: And here we are.
Greg: As we answer the questions that planet Earth is begging to be answered.
Joe: Begging, dying needs to know.
Greg: Why do you turn.
Joe: Salt?
Greg: Here’s what this has never happened to us. Where we started one day and finished the next. And here’s why I love it. There were so many things that we were kind of like, yeah, I guess this doesn’t make any sense. But when I knew I had a day to think about it and stew about it. I’ve been thinking about salt all day.
Joe: It’s.
Greg: So before we get back to the important questions that need to be answered about salt, I want to let you know that salt the theatrical cut makes complete sense.
Greg: I take do you have any questions. Last night I could not answer these questions. Today I think I can.
Joe: Okay. I think my main question is what and how.
Greg: So last night we didn’t understand why she went through with pretend killing the president of Russia.
Joe: Right?
Greg: She did that because they had her husband and she needed to pretend like she was doing what the Russians needed her to do so that she could be in the fold and get her husband back.
Joe: Okay, that makes sense.
Greg: So she pretends to kill him. But it’s the spider venom that makes his heart stop or whatever for a little while. And then it turns out, live. Schreiber, by the way, also in this 24 hours, I learned that his name is not B.F. Shriver, which I swear I was saying last night, it’s Liev Schreiber, everybody. Yeah.
Joe: Calm down. Okay?
Greg: This is a real growth moment for me.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. So what else you got? Any other questions?
Joe: I think that answers all of them. I think the movie makes perfect sense now.
Greg: We’re good.
Joe: Totally start to.
Joe: Finish.
Greg: Well, we were also. I remember last night you were like, why on earth did she go ballistic when Orlov comes into the office? By the way, I googled Orlov. Andre Konchalovsky was the person who was going to be Orlov. And I know you’re looking at me like.
Joe: What the hell is that?
Greg: I totally talked about this dude. He was the director of Runaway Train from 1985 with Angelina Jolie’s dad. Okay. Name Jon voight.
Joe: Jon voight.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And, Julia Roberts older brother, Eric Roberts was in that movie, nominated for best Picture. I know that was your next question.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: But then Andrei Konchalovsky also directed Tango in Cash.
Joe: I mean.
Joe: I have a soft spot for that movie, and also it does not hold up at all under any.
Joe: Sort of.
Joe: Looking back at it.
Greg: It was a great bad movie in the 90s, potentially in the early aughts, and it has definitely gone downhill. We’ve had the conversation that needed to be had. Yeah. On this, Mike, about tango and Josh in the past. Yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna do an episode on it, but.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Crazy that the director of Tango and Cash was going to be the bad guy in 2010 thought.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: That’s nothing but a good sign.
Joe: That.
Greg: Is. Anyways, we were questioning why she went so crazy when Orlov came into the office. Yeah, think about it. She knows that she’s a Russian agent. Yeah, and the CIA is now wondering what’s going on with her. So either the CIA is going to capture her, maybe offer. We don’t know.
Joe: The.
Greg: Russians are trying to get her to do the thing to the Russian president. She’s like, I got to get out of here because both camps are trouble for me right now. If I want to stay alive and if I want to reconnect with my husband, I need to get out of here. And so she starts going nuts with Ikea furniture and making things happen.
Greg: Yeah. Any other questions? I’ve been thinking about this all day.
Joe: Okay. I think that those aren’t are my main ones. I still think that she overreacts when Orlov comes in.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: And I would have been happier if they extended that first act out a little bit. He comes in, she goes home. Maybe she comes in to work the next day and things start to unravel at work then. And then she kind of freaks out and runs away or something like that, you know, like, yeah, in the moment I just come back.
Joe: The opening scene, she’s being tortured, right? She’s not giving up anything. And then all of a sudden, Orlov and she loses her mind. And so those two characters are not the same character to me. Like, give it a little bit, but I understand. I do appreciate your your thought on this, that, you know, it makes more sense. But still they kind of again, poking holes in this movie.
Joe: It’s take some of the fun out of how amazing.
Joe: The action and oh.
Joe: Bonkers perfect this movie is in every way.
Greg: So all right, so let’s get back to our important questions and your power cut out. While we were talking about your answer to the question, how can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake? So would you be willing to restate what you started last night? How can this movie be fixed? Joe and AKA who should be in the remake?
Joe: It is keeping the cast the same. I think this cast is perfect.
Greg: Really good.
Joe: Yep. And I think you set this in the John Wick verse and you bring in Christopher McQuarrie to write better exposition scenes because he is the master of. Let’s put four people in a room and restate the plot so that everyone knows what’s going on. And I think if we had even just 1 or 2 moments like that throughout the movie.
Joe: Yeah, could.
Joe: Have been her on a phone call or texting someone or whatever it is. It would have changed the trajectory of the movie. So you understood her motivations because basically, from the time she escapes to the end, you’re not even quite sure what her motivations are. There are twists and turns of like, why is she killing the Russian president?
Joe: Because you think that that happened. Why? So that’s where Christopher McQuarrie and, Mission Impossible World is so good at, like, okay, here we are. This is what we’re doing. Go action scene. Right. Refocus.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Go from there. So that’s that’s how I do it. What’s your answer to this?
Greg: Completely agree. Getting the gang in a room to hash things out. Or more conversations between her and Liv Schreiber, which is a name that I say correctly now. Yeah, she would tell Ejiofor. I mean, there were a couple scenes that they cut. There was one that they didn’t even film where she was explicitly saying why she was doing what she was doing, and Liv Schreiber didn’t believe her.
Greg: But I think they keep it pretty vague. And I like that we don’t know who she’s playing for. She’s got this real ideological core, and we don’t know if she’s you know, working for Russia or if she’s working for the CIA. We never explicitly hear, you know, what she’s doing, you know what her intentions are. But her emotions start to kind of show through and disrupt because of her marriage.
Greg: And we think at the end that her emotions are disrupting her ideology, and she is going to be kind of a rogue agent, but probably working with totally. Ejiofor.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And that’s going to give us at least 3 or 4 great, solid movies if they kept going.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Agreed.
Greg: Okay, so how can this movie be fixed? I think we should remake it. I think we should start over, and we should get the 4 to 5 solid movies that we deserve. And I think salt should be played by Anya Taylor-Joy.
Joe: Oh, I’m in. All right.
Greg: I haven’t seen the mad Max movie, the shoot, the Furiosa movie. It’s that she was in really good. Okay, so how is she as an action star?
Joe: She’s great. Okay. She’s in. Yeah.
Greg: So that could be like her. Mrs.. Mr.. And Mrs. Smith. That’s her proof of concept. And now we know she can do it. Let’s give her salt. Her boss is is no longer Liev Schreiber. Although I’m sure Liv Schreiber would be amazing. Still.
Joe: Yeah, I agree.
Greg: I’m giving this one to Jesse Plemons.
Joe: I’m in. Anything he’s in, I’m in.
Greg: I mean, we’re questioning if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, yet he can be really warm. He seems like a good dude, but he plays, you know, off balance really well. I want to give the title Ejiofor part to Dev Patel.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: I want this movie needs to happen if Hollywood is paying attention. Yeah, this is great. Totally. I mean.
Greg: He can be funny when he needs to. He can be serious when he needs to. He could direct this movie. I’m not going to let him direct it. I’m not giving a green light to that. Although he could. Yeah, but we know that he’s an amazing director and I can’t wait to see what he does next. This movie is going to be directed by David McKenzie.
Greg: This is a guy we haven’t talked about on this program yet, but he directed a movie called Hell or High Water. Have you ever seen that movie Chris Pine?
Joe: I don’t think.
Joe: So. Oh, and I love Chris Pine too.
Greg: He also just directed a movie that we will, I think we will definitely be getting to. We haven’t brought it up in the meetings yet, but it’s called relay and it’s on Netflix right now and it’s a really good, low budget, well-made action thriller. He’s a really good action director, okay. But also he’s looking for he’s looking for more in the relationships and the human connection.
Greg: It’s like great bad movies, but emphasis on the great and the humanity behind it. There’s something about his movies. You’re like, hey, that was really good. Those are really good movie. So we’ll be talking about David Mackenzie in the future, but he’s going to direct this movie written by Tony Gilroy.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: We’re getting The Bourne dude back in the good graces of the spy thriller world. He’s done with Andor. I think it’s time for Tony Gilroy to step up to the plate and write the next Bourne series, the updated Bourne series. So I think we we make it and we do 4 or 5 of those.
Joe: Perfect. I want 4 or 5 of these. So I mean.
Joe: I.
Greg: Took this so seriously. Usually I’m like joking around. There’s like animated characters. There’s digitally de-aged characters. No, I take this seriously.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: It’s it’s worth it. This movie is underappreciated.
Joe: So.
Greg: All right, Joe, we are almost done here. Next. Important question. What album is this movie?
Joe: I picked an album and this one came to me almost instantaneously when I thought about this.
Joe: Wow.
Joe: I wanted an album and a band that, in their time, when they were at their kind of peak, they were underappreciated but really influenced music going forward. Okay, I picked the Pixies, Surfer Rosa.
Joe: Oh my gosh.
Joe: The Pixies are famously probably more popular now than they were when they were kind of at their peak in the kind of late 80s and famously, the influence of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain for, you know, what grunge would be. And he looked at them as, so I look at this, you know, the Pixies Surfer Rosa is to Nirvana’s Nevermind as salt is to John Wick is kind of the way that I’m kind of looking at this.
Joe: I’m like, that’s incredible. They missed their window a little bit. Like I think the Pixies, if they if grunge kind of hits and they’re like four years.
Joe: Later.
Joe: They’re one of the biggest bands in the world. And this movie kind of came out and missed its window.
Joe: You know.
Joe: So yeah, that’s what album this is for me. Bone machine would be the song that I would put I know Everyone loves, I love Where Is My Mind?
Joe: Sure. Yeah, but Classic Bone.
Joe: Machine is probably my favorite song on.
Joe: That album. Oh my gosh.
Greg: I’m gonna listen to that album. That’s a great.
Joe: Call. Yeah.
Joe: What album is this for you?
Greg: This album for me. Okay, so I was going for a one off. I wanted a one off that was so beholden to greatness before it. So I was looking for like a supergroup, a band that maybe only put out one record and moved on to other bands, or was a defining album, amongst other bigger albums that sounded like you know, like you’re saying like the grunge era or whatever.
Greg: I couldn’t find the perfect one. And so I’m doing a little bit of a cheap where I’m doing an album. There’s this is a band that really only has one album out, but it’s because they just started. They just got together like 2 or 3 years ago during Covid, and it’s a band called rocket. They’re out of Los Angeles.
Greg: I just saw them in Seattle a couple months ago, their first time through town. I saw them at a venue with like 90 people, and they were so good.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: They’re one of those bands. They’re like 23 years old, and they sound like they have learned everything that they needed to know from like 1990 to 2002. When it comes to like, shoegaze or there’s a little bit of Built to Spill in there when you listen to them, you hear the influences and it’s not a turn off. It’s like, oh my gosh, that’s the perfect guitar part from Built to Spill to put on this song right now.
Greg: And I wanted the band, whoever this was, to have a female singer and rocket has a female singer, so there’s a new album that they’ve just put out. It’s called R is for rocket. If you listen to the show, you should listen to this band. You can go to our Spotify playlist, Great Bad Movies, music. And I’m going to put on a song called Act Like Your Title on there.
Greg: And this record is, I think, my favorite record that I listened to in 2025. I haven’t actually thought that through, but it is definitely in the top 2 or 3. I listen to this album so much last year, so R is for rocket is by a band called rocket, and that’s my album for so Awesome.
Joe: I am looking it up right now to add to my Apple Music right as we speak, because I’m always looking for new bands and I am.
Greg: They’re so good.
Joe: I’m obsessed.
Greg: So, oh, you know what? They stop by Kexp on their way through town and you know, there’s always like a lag after they come through town that actually just dropped on YouTube a little bit ago. So I’ll put that on the episode page for this episode on Great Bad movies.com. I’ll put their live set from Kexp so people can check them out.
Greg: They’re so good. The next time they come through town, they’re going to play the 700 people I know it.
Joe: That’s awesome, I am, I’m looking forward to checking them out. This is a total sidebar and I need to find them on here. But I just discovered this German kind of dance rock band that is my new obsession, and they are.
Joe: Called.
Joe: Corolla Dust, and they’re their new album for 2025 is called Echo and Echo of Love. And I saw them on, just a clip on Kexp and went to the album and it is really good. So awesome to be bringing the heat back to Seattle, thankfully.
Greg: When did they ever stop?
Joe: That’s true. That’s fair. There’s so great.
Greg: There’s an awesome over there. All right, Joe, it’s all come down to this. We have a rating scale. Great bad movies, good bad movie. Okay. Bad movie, bad bad movie. Worst case scenario. Awful bad movie. How does Sault rank for you?
Joe: If this is a no brainer, this is a great bad movie. It’s through and through one of our movies and it might be on the Mount Rushmore of my favorite movies we have done. It’s to me, rivals next in a lot of ways in terms of like, wow, the affection that I have for this movie.
Joe: So it’s.
Joe: You know, drinking game alert. If you’re waiting for the reference to next in one of our podcasts, there it is.
Greg: Let’s make this the official episode for the theatrical cut of salt. And someday, let’s do the director’s cut and have it be like the results.
Joe: Yes. All right. Okay.
Greg: We should eventually make our way through all three cuts of this movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: In fact, it might just be the next three episodes of the show. We don’t know.
Joe: Oh, my.
Greg: Gosh, I would totally do.
Joe: That. Yeah. Me too.
Greg: All right, well, Joe.
Joe: We did it. Yeah, 24 hours later.
Joe: Yeah, we did it. This is the conversation that you had 15 years to talk about salt or 16 years. So, you know, you’re welcome. This was the conversation that needed to be had. And nobody else should probably talk about this movie because this is the definitive conversation about this movie.
Greg: Great job Phillip.
Joe: Noyce. Yeah, great.
Greg: Job, Phillip Wimmer.
Joe: Yeah, great.
Greg: Job, Angelina Jolie and Liv Schreiber. And to Whittle Ejiofor I mean yeah guys. Unbelievable.
Joe: Yeah. Disappointing that there are no sequels but you know a one off as you say it was perfect.
Joe: So yeah.
Greg: Yeah totally. Oh we should probably say as always, spoilers for salt.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Spoilers for salt. If you don’t want spoilers, you should stop now. Go watch the movie and then come right back to this spot.
Greg: So if you’ve enjoyed this episode, would you please go to your podcast app and write a review of this podcast on whatever it is Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, whatever it is that would really help us out. Take a second. And if you do an inside joke on there, we will read it on the podcast. That would.
Joe: Solutely.
Greg: Nothing would spark joy like that for me.
Joe: Yes.
Joe: I agree.
Greg: You can find us on Instagram at Great Bad Movies Show. We’re also on YouTube great Bad Movies show. You can go to our website, Great Bad movies.com and find out everything you need to know about the show.
Joe: That’s right, you can email us at Great Bad Movie Show at gmail com. You don’t want your inside jokes public. That’s a great way to get in touch with us, you know.
Greg: So tell us what movies you think we should cover.
Joe: Yeah, and we probably won’t. But you can still tell us. You know, we totally will.
Greg: We are a very suggestible group of people. That’s what I’ve learned about us.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Anytime somebody says a movie to me about the show, I go, there’s a little bit of hesitation and they go, hold up. That would be amazing.
Joe: What do we have to see that movie?
Greg: But also a lot of times when people mention movies, it’s like, dude, it’s on the list. I’ll send a screenshot of, what’s already on the list.
Joe: So perfect. Oh, geez.
Greg: Listen, this has been great, Joe, but, I’m a floor fixer at this super old church in New York City, and I have a rare, very rough day ahead of me. The president of Russia just fell through. It. I’ve got a lot of work to do before Sunday.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, that that that tracks.
Joe: Anyway, I’m running late. I think there’s a almost a Tony Scott of helicopters outside. I need to take a ride and then jump into the Potomac River. Let me worry about it. I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. Just run through the leaves.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And slowly fade out and call it a day.
Joe: Yeah. The way this movie does the.
Greg: Weirdest ending in history, that’s a very slow fade. I don’t that’s I think I’ve said that out loud every time I watch this movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Okay. Well, that works for me because I’ve just been told by people looking at my career record that at a certain point a few years ago, I didn’t exist.
Joe: Oh, that’s that’s strange.
Greg: That’s a weird thing to be told. Yeah, I’m going to go check that out.
Joe: Yeah. You should yeah. And this has been great as always, but, I have, I have to go. I have to go jump off of different moving vehicles for, you know, to escape people. I got to jump off of a subway car, and so off of, a bridge on to a truck, and then off the truck onto another truck, you know, normal stuff.
Greg: Classic truck to track.
Joe: And then off of a bridge. You know, it’s it’s all good.
Greg: You know, we’ve all been there. We’ve all been.
Joe: There. Yeah.
Greg: Okay. Well, that works for me, because I’m late for this class that I just found out about in town where they teach you how to quickly knock people out with one punch. Oh, it’s at this. It’s this place called One Hit Wonders. I’m gonna. I’m going to head over there. I’m almost late for my class.
Joe: That’s no way I can top that.
Joe: But, yeah. Listen, this has been great. But Netflix just asked that if we could restate the plot of this movie 3 or 4 times throughout. So people don’t get lost because they’re on the second screen? That would be great, but I don’t think I can do it with this movie. It’s too confusing. So I just took a boat bus to New York and and I’m gonna see what happens.
Joe: So that.
Greg: Makes sense. That makes.
Joe: Sense.
Greg: I probably should have said this earlier. You know, sometimes you, like, don’t say the thing you mean to say. I’m totally wanted for some things in my past.
Joe: Yeah. But.
Greg: I think I’m gonna head to the white House anyway and see if I can get in.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: That’s right. I’m sure they’ll just let you write in, you know. Okay, great. I’m planning to go into work tomorrow anyway and just freak out over those smallest detail and and and totally set my life on a new path. So.
Greg: Sure. MacGyver. Some Ikea furniture and see what happens.
Joe: Exactly. Yeah. You know. Absolutely.
Greg: That makes sense. Well, in the time that you were just saying what you were going to head out and do, I actually did make it into the white House. I mean, I’m in there now. And, I made it all the way down to the, like the nuclear launch room underneath the white House. And, I know the news is on one of these TVs.
Greg: I think I’m just gonna watch some TV the way Leo Shriver did and found out some plot points.
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, that was surprisingly convenient for that.
Joe: That not new story for that moment, the.
Greg: TV was muted until that moment and then muted immediately after it.
Joe: Yeah. You know.
Joe: That’s good. I’m running late as my job in the white House to turn the TV on and off. And that’s a surprisingly random and.
Joe: Important time and a movie. Great, great.
Greg: You you will only unmuted for, spider related news that happens. That’s important to our plot.
Joe: Yeah. Spider related news as it relates to the Russian president only.
Greg: Obviously, that’s classic.
Joe: Genius guy Tucker.
Joe: That’s right. It’s the very specific job description that I got. So if.
Greg: You’re looking for that setting and every device that you.
Joe: Have. That’s right.
Greg: All right. Well, that works for me, Joe. This was so much fun watching. So thanks for watching and I will see you soon.
Joe: Blast. See you soon.