The Giver

Son, I'm afraid this isn't another Tron sequel

Grade: C +

Director: Phillip Noyce

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgård, Katie Holmes, Odeya Rush, Taylor Swift, Cameron Monaghan and Emma Tremblay

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 40 min.

It’s easy to see why it took 17 years to get Lois Lowry’s best-selling 1993 YA novel The Giver on the silver screen. Instead of embracing the potential depth of its subject matter, the film adaptation co-produced by Jeff Bridges and directed by Phillip Noyce—both able filmmakers—is distilled down to a promising premise bookended by empty mythology on one side and convenient, magical-transformative malarkey on the other.

A pre-credits narration informs the audience that after “The Ruin,” humankind rebuilt society into a cluster of utopian “Communities” ruled by a council of Elders and their authoritarian chief (Meryl Streep). Memories of the past have been all but wiped out so society can begin anew. The weather is always good, the trees are fake, there aren’t any animals and no one carries a surname. Your family and occupation are predetermined. Citizens must dress alike and aren’t permitted to lie or use “imprecise language.” Mandatory morning meds keep everyone docile, emotionless and, yes, colorblind. And elderly citizens and deficient infants are “released to Elsewhere”—you don’t need to watch Logan’s Run to know what that means.

Wondering what The Ruin was and how humans were able—logistically and ethically—to develop these uber-planned communities? Don’t bother. The Giver doesn’t explicate such pesky details about its backstory. Instead, we glean them through the eyes of Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), an 18-year-old tapped as the new Receiver of Memory. Jonas will telepathically inherit the entirety of human history and emotion from The Giver (Jeff Bridges), a curmudgeonly elder living in an oversized library near the edge of the town.

As Jonas’ eyes are opened to the wonders of colors, snow, dancing, elephants and war, this carefully chosen Receiver immediately starts to crack like a cheap windshield. One of his only rules is to never share with others what he learns during training, so of course the first thing he does is tell his friends about what he’s learned during training. Jonas gets surly with his delegated parents (Alexander Skarsgård and Katie Holmes) and wants to kiss doe-eyed girl-friend Fiona (Odeya Rush), to the dismay of Asher (Cameron Monaghan), whose unruly and jealous disposition is supposedly the sort of character flaw that gets ironed out by medication.

The Giver is blessed with the handsome cinematography of Ross Emery, who formerly directed photography for the Matrix trilogy and Dark World. The film’s early acts team with a youthful exuberance—conveyed using subtle jump cuts and off-angle shots—churning beneath a futurististic milieu muted by Emery’s black-and-white palette.

But once Jonas visits The Giver and color starts intruding on this sci-fi Pleasantville, the precarious plot starts to unravel. The Giver doesn’t want to just impart wisdom on Jonas, but also radicalize him into shaking up this dystopic Garden of Eden (including some subterfuge involving Fiona and an apple). And once Gabriel, a newborn future Receiver, is slated for “release,” Jonas decides that it’s finally time to go rogue.

Besides the contrivance of how it’s accomplished, it’s hard to accept that this meticulously engineered society could be so easily undone by one young boy and a baby going on a walkabout beyond some invisible border. Or that it hadn’t happened before Jonas came along.

Ultimately, the sense of Sameness plaguing the flawed utopia in The Giver afflicts its cinematic presentation. In the end, Jonas finds his Rosebud and a cabin echoing with Christmas carols. But viewers are left to mull an aftermath of Jonas’ journey as unexplained as everything before it. Maybe the audience needs its own Giver.

Salt

Say hello to my anorexic friend

Grade: B

Director: Phillip Noyce

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and Chiwetel Ejiofor

Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Angelina Jolie isn’t as good as actress as her notoriety portends nor is she as bad as her detractors claim. But, she has always struck a convincing action (anti-)heroine, no small feat in an almost exclusively male-dominated genre.

Such is the case in Salt, in which Jolie plays the titular CIA officer (to wit, a part originally written for Tom Cruise), who goes on the lam after being accused of being a KGB sleeper agent plotting to assassinate the Russian president, et al. The film opens ten years prior, with a scantily-clad Salt being tortured by North Korean captors before being part of a prisoner exchange across the Bridge of No Return. This reprise of the opening sequence in Die Another Day is not the only James Bond homage seasoning Salt: a would-be Russian defector, Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), employs Rosa Klebb’s shoe-dagger in From Russia with Love to effect his escape from custody; even echoes of The Living Daylights surround the circumstances behind the assassination of a high-ranking Russian dignitary.

These Cold War movie references are not the least bit profound, much like casting Liev Schreiber, who played Raymond Shaw in the The Manchurian Candidate remake, in another movie about commie agents nesting States-side awaiting their appointed hour to strike. Instead, they infuse the film with an almost nostalgic air, evoking bygone threats that now seem passé in comparison to the dangers of the new century. Indeed, only the recent roundup of a Russian sleeper cell living in New Jersey gives Salt a modicum of fortuitous topicality.

Untangling the web of plot twists and turns would require quintuple the allotted space for this review. Suffice to say the script requires you to not so much suspend your disbelief as put it in stasis. Don't mistake confusion for complexity in a storyline that vacillates in sync with Salt’s ever-changing hairstyle and coloring. Considering the involvement of screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, whose credits read like a rogues gallery of cinematic crime (Law Abiding Citizen; Street Kings; Ultraviolet; The Recruit; etc.), the fact that Salt isn’t an unwatchable dumpster fire should receive second billing on the theater marquee.

To the contrary, director Phillip Noyce maintains a brisk, breathless pace evocative of his ‘90s Jack Ryan pictures. The terrific non-CGI stunt work is as retro as the film’s premise. Moreover, the genuinely keeps-you-guessing storyline imbues Salt with a moral ambiguity that plays to Jolie’s personal and professional personae. A bit more character development and background would have put more flesh on Salt’s rail-thin motives. But, preserving an air of mystery – and the 93-minute running time – prove a worthy tradeoffs.

Like its namesake condiment, Salt lacks substance but goes perfectly with a movie-going popcorn-muncher. It is taut and pleasantly preposterous, which is as much as you can ask from pulp that only pretends to take itself serious so you don’t have to.

Neil Morris