BEFORE: I'm sort of lumping spies and terrorists together here, but for me there's no real movie distinction to be made - the wording only tells you if they're on your side or not, right? Linking from "The Devil's Own", I'm sure there some connection to be made between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (last seen in "Hackers"), if only I could think of it. Don't worry, it'll come to me...
THE PLOT: A CIA agent goes on the run after a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy.
AFTER: The other morning, I made a special sandwich for breakfast, recreating one I'd seen sold out of a food truck in San Diego. It was a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with bacon, cream cheese and a fried egg added to it. My first reaction was, "Yes, please!", but I'd already bought a breakfast burrito, so I passed - yet I continued to wonder what that would taste like. After some more thinking about it, it started to sound disgusting - what if the grape jelly clashed with the fried egg? What are the chances of putting all those things together and having it taste good. And upon even further reflection, it started to make sense again - I like peanut butter and bacon as a combo, and eggs and bacon is a classic, and even jelly and cream cheese go well together - so how could it fail? (And it didn't, though some more experimentation with the jelly-to-egg ratio may be required)
This film is like the opposite of that sandwich - the premise sounds ludicrous, then it starts to make some kind of sense based on its own internal logic, then it just throws all sense out the window and heads straight into ridiculousness. Like some combination of "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Boys from Brazil", it strains belief with regards to what a person can be programmed to do, and how buried a sleeper agent can be.
So, who is Evelyn Salt working for? Is she a programmed Soviet agent, masquerading as a CIA agent? Or is she a CIA agent pretending to be a programmed Soviet agent that's masquerading as a CIA agent? If that sounds maddening, it kinda is. But the film can't have it both ways, though it sure seems to want to.
Look, all film is manipulative, I get that. But too much manipulation becomes disrepectful to the audience - too many "gotchas" and I get pissed off. Twists are fine, but fake-outs are not. It's probably best to turn off parts of your brain if you want to enjoy this film, or you may find yourself shouting, "Oh come ON!" at the screen a lot.
NITPICK POINT: Why would a Soviet sleeper agent, planted in the U.S., be programmed to attack the Russian president? This programming would have been done years ago, before Glasnost, before Perestroika, so there would have been no way to predict that man would come to visit the U.S. So, shenanigans.
NITPICK POINT #2: Why remove a disguise, especially a good one, in the MIDDLE of a mission? The goal might be accomplished, but doesn't the disguise continue to, you know, work?
NITPICK POINT #3: I don't claim to know much about the U.S. defense system, but I'm pretty sure that computer authorization is binary - either you have it, or you don't. It's not like a loading complicated web-page - 50% authorization? What the heck is that, but a cheap way to heighten suspense?
Also starring Liev Schreiber (last seen rocking a dress in "Mixed Nuts"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "American Gangster"), cameos from Andre Braugher (last seen in "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"), Corey Stoll (last seen in "Push").
RATING: 3 out of 10 handcuffs
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