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That Girl from Derwent explains why she loves being an honorary "man". And why, actually, that isn't what she loves at all.

Director: Philip Noyce
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber
Runtime: 100 mins
Rating: ***

Amongst the many effects of George W. Bush’s presidency, a probably unimportant consequence has been overlooked: for much of the past decade, thrillers have been unable to include an American President as a character without implying to the audience that he’s either greedy, over-powerful, stupid or evil. The president that briefly appears in Salt is anonymous and boring, and when he’s under threat, it’s only other characters we’re actually concerned with. This fun espionage actioner is too busy profiting from the genre’s potential for excitement to worry about the welfare or the wrongdoings of the leader of the free world.

Angelina Jolie’s Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent accused of being a sleeper spy, trained in Russia to instigate political turmoil and possible nuclear warfare. On the run, fear mounts over an impending political assassination, and it’s unclear whose side Salt is on. When we find out, it’s also unclear why she went on the run and didn’t avoid the mess more easily in the first place, but rather than feeling like an excuse for a chase film, it’s one of many plot elements that play with Cold War-era paranoia about traitors, undercover agents and double-crossings. A Russian under interrogation reports that Salt and many others have been brainwashed and rigorously trained at childhood, so that on a particular date in the future America could be destroyed. The explanation is tongue-in-cheek with a melodramatic voiceover and flashback sequence, and the day of reckoning in question is actually called Day X. The film is never too serious, underplaying the backstory of its lead and the realism of the Russian-American angle – though a suicide bombing feels a bit out of place, and relies on an implausible plot point.

The chase sequences themselves remain firmly on the Mission:Impossible and late Bond side of spy movies, though it’s a shame that thanks to the talkier scenes earnestly and solidly carried by Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, this isn’t always a good thing, with a few too many jumps across lifts shafts and onto moving lorries. The pace of all this is exhilarating without harming the overall plot structure, beginning and ending in action, and only needing 100 minutes to do it. It’s been much talked about, but it’s really great that the independent agent doing all this leaping and running is a woman for once, and that there’s no need for anyone in the film to point this out in case we hadn’t noticed. Jolie’s last fight (and her final resourceful use of nearby objects) ends with her taking rebellious revenge in front of a big, mostly male crowd whilst half-covered in blood, creating an image that makes the villain’s death satisfying in an unexpected, transgressive way. One wishes that someone had happened earlier, and that film producers are bold enough to back more characters like Salt.

Director: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham
Runtime: 98 mins
Rating: *

An interesting Belgian film called JCVD was released a couple of years ago. It’s about an ageing action star – played by the actor himself – who is unwittingly caught up in a bank robbery, before being accused by police of being one of its perpetrators. At one moment in the film, the star slowly drifts out of the scene, to where we can see the set and lighting equipment, and suddenly begins talking to the camera. In a single-take monologue, he speaks candidly about the highs and lows of his life so far – his career, drug problems, love life, successes and mistakes – and hopes for some kind of redemption.

One of the many clever effects of doing this is to undermine not just our perception of stardom, but also the sense of a comeback that the plot initially suggests. The actor was Jean-Claude Van Damme. Both him and Steven Seagal turned down offers to be in The Expendables, a film that I found neither as enjoyable in its own right as other action releases I’ve seen this year, nor fun for reasons of ridiculousness. It’s less about comebacks than its successful promotion would suggest, but does unite some actors from director/writer/star Sylvester Stallone’s generation who have starred in similar kinds of films, and even rolls the credits to “The Boys are Back in Town”.

Stallone’s Barney Ross heads up an elite unit of mercenaries who are enlisted to topple a military dictatorship on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. The daughter of the puppet general himself turns out to be their inside contact, and it becomes clear that The Expendables have been dragged into this mess not just thanks to a CIA agent, but thanks to an ex-CIA agent too. Meanwhille, in a plotline completely inconsequential to the rest of the film, Ross’ right hand-man (Jason Statham) must win back an estranged girlfriend.

The fighting backgrounds of the cast vary from karate and wushu to fake and Greco-Roman wrestling, but the hand-to-hand combat is overpowered by excessive to the point of underwhelming guns and explosives. Jet Li in particular feels like he was hired to lose his fights, and only takes out enemies by shooting them. One part of the film that has a sense of humour about the coming together of these actors is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s scene (which is also Bruce Willis’ only appearance, though from the way it’s played you expect him to re-appear if there’s a sequel), an appearance that’s kind of self-important and not especially funny, but which also contains a spark, albeit a cheesy spark, noticeably lacking from the rest of the film.

The only character other than these cameo roles with any charisma is the villain played by Eric Roberts, recognizable most recently for his small role in The Dark Knight. Statham and Stallone get the most scenes, and as a pairing they seem like nothing more than colleagues. There’s an understanding that to just replay the style of dialogue used from the action films of twenty years ago wouldn’t work in The Expendables, but neither Stallone or main writer David Callaham provide the characters with banter anything less than forced, boring and stilted. Those who enjoy it know that an action film of this kind should never be any of those things.

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Director: Juan José Campanella
Starring: Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil
Runtime: 127 mins
Rating: ****

The winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, The Secret in their Eyes feels very much like a classic genre film. These generic qualities are numerous, and they’re all quite distinct. This isn’t to say that the film jumps from one stylish pastiche to another, or has characters that think life is one long movie. The effect is often achieved by imagery alone. It’s a police procedural whose melancholy opening dimly shows two people divided by a parting train in the most typical of ways; it’s a noir and a romance whose central passion is marked by shyness and glances; and it’s a crime thriller where justice can be determined by incredible intuition as well as by pragmatism, be it hard work or politically convenient decision-making.

In Argentina at the end of the millennium, an ex-federal justice agent goes to meet the boss he hasn’t seen in years. During retirement, he’s begun writing a novel originating in an old case of his, the rape and murder of a young, female schoolteacher in 1974. The hero Benjamín Espósito is attracted to it not just because of mystery, but because his attitude towards life seems to be bound up in the events of the time.

The film is brilliantly shot, and the plot is consistently intriguing without being too mysterious. One criticism could be the inevitable obviousness with which it shows its literary origins. For many reasons, a story about the writing of a book simply isn’t as effective onscreen as it is on the page. So you could say that Based On A Book is the genre that stands out the most; but this wouldn’t be quite correct. The genres I mentioned before are bound up with the idealism of a few characters, especially concerning sometimes-overemphasised ideas of passion and justice. The hero, played brilliantly by Ricardo Darín, is a positively gallant detective, one determined to figure out the crime he’s given to solve. When, at a couple of points in the film, his hope is damaged by state-sponsored injustice, the act of writing feels like an attempt to restore this idealism. An unexpected ending (in an occasionally implausible film) then completely alters his perspective. It looks like he finishes the book, but we don’t know what he’s written.

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