Margarita Movies

This was officially San Diego Comic-Con recovery week for Team Margarita Movie.  I can’t discuss SDCC because what happens at Comic-Con stays at Comic-Con and on various places on Flickr and Twitter and in the living memories of the survivors.  Or something.  

Nothing major happened at the taco this week, besides Dan promising to spend next Comic-Con with our bartender in exchange for entrance to the Maxim Party (not a euphemism).  OH!  Also Drunk Dan violated the Waitress Treaties of 1864 by asking one of the servers if anyone ever mentioned that she looks like Eva Mendes. This is the waitress we call Ghetto Eva Mendes, by the way, because she looks exactly like a lesser Eva Mendes. We never said we were clever.  ”I get that a lot” she says, while mentioning that she doesn’t think she looks like her, asserting her own individuality and refusing to be pigeonholed as a wannabe starlet.  This doesn’t stop Drunk Dan though, who insists on the fact, eventually saying “TAKE IT AS A COMPLIMENT.”  As Lou mentioned, any time someone says “TAKE IT AS A COMPLIMENT,” it is very much NOT a compliment.

Anyway, we watched SALT.

One thing about SALT is that it is preposterous from the get-go.  It opens with Angelina Jolie getting tortured by North Koreans in her underwear.  She swears she is not a spy, but a businesswoman.  OK… do you think anyone that looks like Angelina Jolie needs to go to North Korea?  What business do you do in North Korea?  There’s no goddamn economy there!  Look, it’s a backwards country over there, but they know that if there’s a hot white chick in the entire country, there’s a 50/50 shot she’s a spy.  It’s just common sense.

Liev Schrieber shows up to trade her for some dude that looks like my dad.  This is against policy to trade hostages, but apparently Salt’s husband would have made a big stink about leaving Salt in the grips of the Kim Jong Illmatic.  Salt’s husband, btw, is not the Secretary of Defense or some such higher up, but an arachnologist with a neckbeard.  It looked like the rest of his facial hair was included in the trade as Moustache to Be Named Later.  During this exchange, the audience is clued into the fact that Salt was INDEED A SPY, and not a businesswoman like everyone absolutely nobody believed.

A few years later we return to Salt’s regular job as a CIA analyst, and a random Russian dude shows up to explain how there is a Russian sleeper agent ready to activate and fuck shit up, with the first step being assassinating the Russian president at the funeral of the US Vice President.  The name of this Russian sleeper agent is … EVELYN SALT.

DUNH DUNH.

Salt’s like, wait, I’m not a Russian spy.  To prove this, I will fight my way out of the CIA, get home to steal some weapons and a poison spider. Wait… that doesn’t seem like what some CIA analyst would do.  Oh, I see.  She is INDEED A SPY, and not a CIA analyst like everyone absolutely nobody believed.  Strangely, for a Russian spy she did not post pics of herself on Facebook while she was was home.  That must have been a deleted scene.

If you think I’m going to break the world record for using the phrase “Russian Spy” then you have not seen this movie.  I am about 132 uses short.

The next hour or so is straight action, with Angelina Jolie killing all sorts of folks, including the Russian president.  I’m not sure how they planned the murder of the Russian president while Salt was a kid… when it was still the USSR?  Contingencies!  Salt jumps from building to truck to vehicle without any ankle damage whatsoever, and in the most amazing bit, drives a cop car from the backseat by handling the steering wheel and then TASERING THE COP DRIVER whenever she wants to accelerate.  WHO KNEW TASERS COULD BE THAT USEFUL?!?! 

Salt continues to murderize folks, including a bunch of Russians after they kill her Arachnologist husband!  Right about now, the murdered Russian president WAKES UP FROM A COMA!  He wasn’t killed at all, but was poisoned by some sort of narcaleptic plot spider!  This is supposed to make us think that maybe she’s working for US in some kind of super deep cover.  But then she meets another Russian to go murder the American President.  Damn girl, whose side are you on?

Up until this point, Salt’s disguises have mostly been hair dye and a furry hat.  But to infiltrate the White House to kill the President she takes it up a level, and uses prosthetics to DRESS LIKE A MAN.  This get up is so hilariously bad that it prompted these responses from Team Margarita Movie:

“Damn, she’s going undercover as Rob Lowe!”

“Fuck that, she’s going undercover as TEAM AMERICA.”

Yeah, it looked like that. 

Her fellow Russian Sleeper Agent Bro decides that his best shot at killing the President is by running down a long hallway and suicide bombing … JUST A FEW FEET SHORT OF THE PRESIDENT.  This guy’s the cream of the crop Sleeper Agent but doesn’t even know his suicide explodo radius.  Come on.  So the whole place goes on lockdown and the President is whisked away to the underground bunker.  After a bit of chatter, the President decides now it’s time to shoot a nuclear missile.  This strikes me as a BIT of an overreaction.  

Once everything’s activated and ready to launch, Liev Schrieber (remember him?) takes out a gun and mows down AN ENTIRE ROOM OF MILITARY OFFICERS protecting the President and yells “No, I’M A RUSSIAN SPY!”  Salt catches up and is like “holy fuck, you’re a Russian spy!  Why didn’t we meet each other in Russian spy school!?”  Schreiber’s answer is (seriously) “Dude, I was in the class ahead of you.”  Do senior spies never take sophomore spies to Spy Prom?  Legit question.

Anyway, Schreiber’s big plan is to nuke Iran and get the entire Muslim population to hate the US… as opposed to now…. uh, whatever.  Also, Salt is gonna be his patsy and take the fall for all of it.  Salt’s like, fuck that and they fight.  She ends up cancelling the nuclear launch (I forget if she wanted it to happen or not, I’ve lost track actually) but then gets taken in custody by some military folks that finally made their way to the bunker.  

So Schreiber fails, but he’s going to get away with it, so Salt decides it’s time to Jack Ruby his ass by performing this insane flying choke with the chain of her handcuffs.  Dan was so pumped by this that he dislocated my shoulder in excitement.  I forgot to mention this, but Chiwetel Ejiofor is in this.  He’s basically the CIA guy that’s trying to figure out what’s going on, and when Salt explains it all to him at the end and how she is the only one that can murder every other Russian sleeper agent in America, he’s like, “hey, that sounds like a sequel.  You’re White, I’m Black, we can be…”  

SALT II:  SALT AND PEPPA

Now it’s time to get salty with the SCALE*scale:

STORY - Preposterous!  I’ve read some reviews mentioning how many twists there are, but really, they tell you exactly what’s going to happen at the beginning and then Salt does it.  I think the only twist was Sabretooth getting buck wild in the War Room.  So… 7!

COMEDY - Unintentional hilarity abounds!  The Team America mask in particularly was the hardest I’ve laughed in a theater this year.  9!

AWESOME - Totally awesome.  Taser driving, flying chokes, impervious ankles, fur hats that have matching jackets.  9!

LADIES - Surprising score here.  Jolie is the only woman in the film and she’s actually dressed down for most of it.  For the finale, she’s dressed like a dude and has a mullet.  So I can only put this down around a 6.

ETC - There are more Black actors in this than THE WIRE.  Smash Williams is in it.  Andre Braugher is in it.  Andre Braugher has only two lines in this.  You know that means they realized they had some excess Blackness up in this piece.  Also, all the brothers die other than The Man That Would Be Peppa.  8!

- Han

Next Week:  STEPUP 3D!  Make sure you watch STEP UP 2 THE STREETS so you can follow along!