Trailer
Plot summary
Evelyn Salt is a CIA officer who once spent time in North Korean captivity, where Mike Krause, an arachnologist who later became her husband, helped negotiate her release. In Washington, a man calling himself Orlov, who says he is an FSB officer, asks to defect at the CIA's offices. He describes a sleeper cell of agents trained from childhood to blend into American life, and says the operation begins on Day X with the assassination of the Russian president at the funeral of the American vice president in New York City. Orlov names the agent for the killing: Salt. Counterintelligence officer Darryl Peabody moves to detain her, and she runs, hoping to reach Mike.
Cast
- Vladislav Koulikovas Chenkov's Father
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Salt (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Salt was first written for a man: Tom Cruise and Phillip Noyce discussed his playing Edwin A. Salt for more than a year, but Cruise decided he could not commit because he feared the character was too close to his Mission: Impossible character Ethan Hunt.
- Columbia Pictures executive Amy Pascal suggested Angelina Jolie for the part. Pascal had once invited Jolie for a Bond girl role, but the actress replied that she was more interested in playing James Bond herself.
- Jolie asked for the third act to be reworked, because it originally had Salt rescue a wife and son and she did not believe a mother would neglect her child in that situation. Kurt Wimmer added a break-in at "a place harder than Fort Knox", settling on the White House after considering Camp David.
- August Diehl, who played Salt's husband Mike Krause, came after a recommendation from Jolie's partner Brad Pitt, who had worked with Diehl on Inglourious Basterds. 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 was halted on 29 May 2009 after Jolie suffered a minor head injury while filming an action scene. She was taken to a hospital as a precautionary measure and released the same day with no serious injuries, allowing filming to resume.
- After poor test screenings, Sony brought in producer Joseph M. Singer, former head of Universal's Motion Picture Group, to oversee a rewrite and reshoots. Jolie said he made the film "more comprehensible" to moviegoers, and he was paid an exorbitant price at the time, $2 million, for two months of work.
- The outside of the KA training facility was the Makaryev Monastery in Russia, but the interior was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection in New York's East Village, where the funeral was also shot.
SPOILER
The track "Orlov's Story" uses a Russian lullaby that music editor Joe E. Rand found at Amoeba Music, which inspired the choir heard in other tracks. The rest of the chanting is only random syllables, as Rand and composer James Newton Howard thought actual Russian words would be a spoil about Salt's allegiance.
