Salt is a 2010 American spy action thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce and written by Kurt Wimmer. It stars Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Jolie plays CIA operative Evelyn Salt, who is accused of being a Russian sleeper agent and goes on the run to try to clear her name.
Originally written with a male protagonist, with Tom Cruise initially secured for the lead, the script was ultimately rewritten by Brian Helgeland for Jolie. Filming took place on location in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Albany, New York, between March and June 2009, with reshoots in January 2010. Action scenes were primarily performed with practical stunts, computer-generated imagery being used mostly for creating digital environments.
The film had a panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 22 and was released in North America on July 23, 2010. Salt grossed $294 million at the worldwide box office and received generally positive reviews, with praise for the action scenes and Jolie's performance, but drawing criticism on the writing, with reviewers finding the plot implausible and convoluted. The DVD and Blu-ray discs were released on December 21, 2010, and featured two alternate cuts providing different endings for the film.
Salt was nominated for Best Sound Mixing at the 83rd Academy Awards.
Plot
Evelyn Salt is in prison in North Korea, suspected of being a U.S. spy. The CIA arranges a prisoner exchange to stifle the publicity her boyfriend, arachnologist Mike Krause, is bringing to her case. He proposes marriage despite her admission that she is a CIA operative.
Two years later, Salt interrogates Russian defector Oleg Vasilyevich Orlov, with CIA colleague Ted Winter and counterintelligence officer Darryl Peabody observing. Orlov claims that on "Day X", Russian sleeper agents known as "KAs" will destroy the U.S., and that Agent "KA-12" will assassinate Russian President Boris Matveyev at the impending funeral of the U.S. vice president. He says KA-12's name is Evelyn Salt. Because of this, Peabody orders Salt to be detained, while Orlov kills two agents and escapes. She also escapes and tries to phone her husband Mike while traveling to their home and evading the pursuing CIA and police. Mike has been kidnapped. Salt gathers supplies including weapons and a spider in a jar.
Salt shoots Matveyev at the vice president's funeral and surrenders to Peabody instead of taking the opportunity to kill him. Matveyev is pronounced dead. Salt escapes to a barge where Orlov is waiting with other sleeper agents. In a flashback she recalls her childhood in the Soviet Union, being trained with other children and assuming the identity of the real Evelyn Salt, an American girl who died with her parents in a car crash in the Soviet Union.
Orlov tests Salt by reuniting her with Mike only to immediately have him killed in front of her. Her lack of reaction convinces him, so he says she and another KA will assassinate U.S. president Howard Lewis. Salt kills Orlov and the other agents and leaves to meet with the KA Shnaider in his cover as a Czech - NATO liaison officer.
Disguised as Shnaider's male attaché, Salt accompanies him into the White House, where Shnaider launches a suicide attack, driving the president into a secure underground bunker, accompanied by Winter and other agents. Salt manages to enter the outer bunker before it is sealed.
Russia mobilizes its nuclear arsenal in response to President Matveyev's assassination; U.S. president Lewis orders preparations for retaliation. Upon realizing Salt has entered the outer bunker, Winter kills everyone in the inner bunker except the president, revealing himself to be KA Nikolai Tarkovsky.
Incapacitating the president, Tarkovsky begins targeting missiles at Mecca and Tehran to incite a billion Muslims against the U.S. Salt professes admiration and nearly persuades him to let her join him in the inner bunker when a broadcast reports that President Matveyev is alive, his vital signs having been merely suppressed by spider venom.
Tarkovsky soon realizes Salt is not on his side and reveals that she is to be the patsy for the nuclear attacks. She breaks into the bunker and, after a fight, aborts the missile launch. Reinforcements arrive and Salt is arrested as Winter/Tarkovsky identifies himself as CIA.
As Salt is being led out in chains, Tarkovsky grabs a pair of scissors. As she is led past him, she throws her chain around his neck and jumps over the railing, killing him.
Alone with Peabody in a helicopter, Salt explains her actions to him, promising to hunt down the remaining KA agents if freed, pointing out that Matveyev is alive and that she had not shot him earlier. Salt's fingerprints are found on the barge, convincing Peabody, who allows her to jump from the helicopter into the Potomac River.
Cast
Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative accused of being an agent for the KGB Liev Schreiber as Theodore "Ted" Winter / Nikolai Tarkovsky, head of the CIA's Russia House Chiwetel Ejiofor as Darryl Peabody, an ONCIX agent in pursuit of Salt Daniel Olbrychski as Oleg Vassily Orlov, the Russian defector and spymaster Daniel Pearce as a younger Orlov in the flashbacks August Diehl as Mike Krause, Salt's husband Tika Sumpter as Front deskwoman Olek Krupa as Boris Matveyev, the president of Russia Hunt Block as Howard Lewis, the president of the United States Corey Stoll as Shnaider, the Russian suicide-bomber sent to his death by Orlov Andre Braugher as Secretary of Defense Gaius Charles as CIA officer Zoe Lister-Jones as CIA Security Hub tech Jeremy Davidson as President's Secret Service agent Jeb Brown as bunker technician Vitali Baganov as new Russian President Victoria Cartagena as Portico Checkpoint agent Kamar de los Reyes as Secret Service agent Victor Slezak as One-Star General Alex Garfin as the youngest Chenkov (uncredited)"Salt," TV Time.
Production
Development and writing The early development of the script began while Kurt Wimmer was doing interviews promoting Equilibrium. In a November 2002 interview, he discussed on which scripts he was working. He stated, "I have several scripts – foremost of which is one called The Far-Reaching Philosophy of Edwin A. Salt – kind of a high-action spy thriller..." In another interview, Wimmer described the project as "very much about me and my wife". The plot incorporated many elements from Equilibrium, with an oppressive and paranoid political system of brainwashing that gets overthrown by one of its high-ranking members, who rebels due to an emotional transformation. With the shortened title Edwin A. Salt, the script was sold to Columbia Pictures in January 2007. By July 2007, the script had attracted the attention of Tom Cruise.
Terry George was the first director to join the project, and he also did some revisions to the script, but he soon left the project. Peter Berg was the next director to consider, but he, too, eventually dropped out for undisclosed reasons. A year later, Phillip Noyce was confirmed to direct. Noyce was attracted to Salt for its espionage themes, which are present in most of his filmography, as well as the tension of a character who tries to prove his innocence, yet also does what he was previously accused of.
Casting
Initial discussions took place in 2008 between Cruise and Noyce about Cruise playing Edwin A. Salt. These discussions were going on for more than a year between the pair and their representatives. Cruise decided he was unable to commit to the script because he feared that the character was too close to his Mission: Impossible character Ethan Hunt. Cruise decided to work on Knight and Day, instead. The filmmakers tried to differentiate the character from Hunt, but eventually came to accept they were too similar and decided not to change the characteristics of Salt. Noyce said, "But, you know, he had a valid point. It was kind of returning to an offshoot of a character that he'd already played. It's like playing the brother, or the cousin, of somebody that you played in another movie."
Columbia Pictures executive Amy Pascal suggested Angelina Jolie to Noyce, who had often spoken to Jolie in the past about a desire to create a female spy franchise. Pascal even invited Jolie for a Bond girl role, but the actress replied that she was more interested in playing James Bond herself, instead. Jolie was sent Salts script in September 2008 and liked it. Wimmer, Noyce, and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura went to visit Jolie at her home in France to discuss a possible script and character change. Writer Brian Helgeland helped with the character development and dialogue of the script based on the notes that came out of those discussions with Jolie and to accompany the gender change, the title character's name was changed to Evelyn Salt.
One of Jolie's requests was to rework the third act, which originally had Salt rescue his wife and son from a coalition of villains because she did not believe a mother would neglect her child in this kind of situation. Wimmer decided then to make Salt more crucial to the villain's schemes, and add a sequence where Salt breaks into "a place harder than Fort Knox" – after considering Camp David, Wimmer settled on the White House. When asked if the script written for Cruise was the same for Jolie, he said, "I think that it's just been a continual process, obviously accelerating by changing the central character, but the ideas, the locomotive of ideas that drive the film, are the same. An undercover CIA operative is accused of being a Russian mole, and has to go on the run to defend himself. That's been the same since day one. The tone of the film has changed in this evolution. In the same way, I guess, as – you know – action thrillers have changed along the lines of the Bond films and the Bourne films".
On February 19, 2009, Liev Schreiber was reported to play the role of Ted Winter, Evelyn Salt's friend and colleague in the CIA. Three days later, Chiwetel Ejiofor was named as CIA Officer Peabody, who is in pursuit of Salt. Noyce said Ejiofor, whom he first saw in Dirty Pretty Things, seemed to have the "intelligence and disarming sort of obsessiveness" that a counter-intelligence officer would need. August Diehl, who played Salt's husband Mike Krause, came after a recommendation from Jolie's partner Brad Pitt, who had worked with Diehl in Inglourious Basterds, and Daniel Olbrychski was chosen for Orlov because Andrei Konchalovsky told Noyce that such an evil Russian character could only be played by a Polish actor.
Filming On a budget of $130 million, principal photography took place mostly on location in New York City and Washington, D.C. from March to June 2009. Noyce decided to avoid "typical postcard views of Washington, D.C." to reflect "the more day-to-day environment of massive federal buildings inhabited by the typical bureaucrat". The opening sequence in North Korea was shot at the Floyd Bennett Field, with an extra who had experience with prisoner exchanges acting as a consultant. Salt's rendezvous with Orlov was shot on the Frying Pan, a former lighthouse ship, now moored in the Hudson River, at 26th Street in New York. The outside of the KA training facility was the Makaryev Monastery in Russia, while the interior was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection in New York's East Village, where the funeral was also shot. Filming for a chase sequence took place on Water Street in Albany, New York, near the Interstate 787 ramp, between April and May. Studio production took place at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, New York. Steven Zaillian was brought for uncredited rewrites. Filming also took place on 157th St and Riverside Drive in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. Some scenes were also filmed outside of Manhattan, including the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island, and in Westchester County.