What we used to call the Annual Pastoral Appeal (APA) here in my diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida, has now been changed to the Catholic Ministry Appeal (CPA).  I have never heard a concrete reason for the shift, though some I know that work in the diocesan offices have said that the new title speaks more directly to where the money goes.  In my last years of working for the Church, the theme for this fundraiser was “Salt and Light.”  This is a reference to Matthew 5:13-16 where Jesus calls his disciples the “salt of the Earth” in verse thirteen, and that they are also to be the “light of the world” in verse fourteen.  The former of these states is concerned with how we relate the Faith to others, and the latter is a reminder that we are made for God.  What does any of this have to do with today’s film, Salt (2010)?  Not a whole lot, actually, but watching it brought to mind that old campaign on which I played a small part.  Let us dive into the synopsis and see if I can put a firmer Catholic analysis to it.

Then again, it is difficult to think of anything Catholic when the first scene in Saltv is of Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) being tortured by North Korean soldiers.  As they beat her, she protests that she is simply a businesswoman.  The fact that she is soon involved in a prisoner swamp belies the fact that she actually works for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Still, it is not the “company,” as the spy organization is sometimes called, but her husband, arachnologist Mike Krause (August Diehl), who is responsible for her release.  As her fellow CIA operative and friend, Theodore “Ted” Winter (Liev Schreiber), reminds her, the government does not typically involve itself in such exchanges.  Instead, it is Mike who spearheads the effort, somebody we see fall in love with Evelyn in stages during flashbacks throughout much of the rest of the film.  Two years later and Evelyn is back in the United States in Washington, D.C., planning an anniversary celebration for Mike when her and Ted get word of a Russian defector taken into their custody.  Though they want to leave for the night, they decide that a few more minutes can be devoted to figuring out what this person knows.  It is Evelyn who is sent in to interrogate a man revealed to be Oleg Vassily Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), a one-time spy master for the KGB, otherwise known as the secret service of the Soviet Union.  At Evelyn’s prompting, he tells of a deep cover Soviet operation that he has come to activate, its first goal being the assassination of Boris Matveyev (Olek Krupa), the president of Russia who is coming to the United States to participate in the funeral of the American vice president.  As Oleg finishes talking about these children turned sleeper agents, trained in Russia, he names Evelyn as one of these operatives.  An uproar ensues with a shocked Evelyn trying to deny the accusations.  The person who is taking them seriously is Darryl Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an agent for the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC).  As Oleg is busy escaping from a CIA building, Evelyn decides she does not want to sit around and wait to be questioned.  To Ted’s bewilderment, she finds a way of escaping, too, but doing so without causing any casualties.  A lengthy chase scene ensues with Darryl, Ted, and many other agents chasing her through the streets of our nation’s capital.  When she is able to get in a word of protest, she demands to know if Ted has found her husband.  By the time she gets away once more, this question has yet to be answered.  As such, she travels to New York City, changing her appearance along the way.  Her destination is St. Bartholomew’s Church, for which they used the façade of St. Patrick’s Cathedral but decided to call it something else, for some reason.  The Church would not mind the publicity, Hollywood, I can assure you.  As President Matveyev goes to the ambo (Catholic term for podium, basically) at the funeral service, Evelyn is fighting through the various guard to get at the foreign politician.  It appears that she has killed him before allowing herself to be captured.  Of course, she has no intention of staying in police custody.  Once the inevitable is completed, she travels to the city’s waterfront where she finds Oleg and a number of other Soviet spies with whom she was raised.  Oleg tests her loyalty by having Mike shot and killed in front of her.  It is evident to the audience but not the people in the room that witnessing the death of her husband takes an emotional toll on her.  Thus, once she receives the information she needs about the next phase of Oleg’s grand plan, she murders all those present out of revenge.  She next travels with another Russian sleeper agent, Schnaider (Corey Stoll), to Washington, D.C., where they plan to kill the president of the United States, Howard Lewis (Hunt Block).  Since Schnaider has been working undercover as a liaison in Washington for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), he is able to get them into the White House.  Once there, he sets off a bomb that narrowly misses the president, who is being ushered to a secure underground bunker owing to the receipt of several threats.  With the death of President Metveyev, the Russians are arming their nuclear weapons.  So, too, is President Lewis, getting the infamous “nuclear football” out and going through the steps to activate it.  Ted is on the security detail for the Commander-in-Chief, and he recognizes Evelyn as she punches her way through to get close to the president.  In fact, she is getting too close as Ted, too, is one of the long dormant Russian agents, Nikolai Tarkovsky.  He dispatches everyone else in the room and knocks out the president after all the steps are taken to launch the atomic missiles.  Evelyn comes face-to-face at this point, and her attempts to trick him into letting her into the locked chamber are dashed when he sees on the television news that President Metveyev is still alive.  As such, when she does get in, she is able to deactivate the nuclear football just in time.  As she finally allows herself to be captured, she is able to convince Darryl that she had been working for the United States throughout her apparent period of going rogue.  Hence, we end with him loosening her handcuffs and her jumping from the helicopter to freedom.

At the end of Salt, Darryl frees Evelyn also because she indicates that there are other sleeper agents out there that she intends to kill.  She desires revenge because Oleg and his cronies murder Mike, which was the only semblance of normalcy in her life.  Then again, I cannot imagine anything “normal” about working for the CIA, which makes for a tricky analysis from a Catholic perspective.  It is an occupational hazard to have to cheat, lie, and watch loved ones die.  Recently, while listening to Father Mike Schmitz’s “Catechism in a Year” podcast, I was reminded of the Church’s position on committing sin for the perceived motive of doing good and how this does not excuse the offense.  Put simply, the ends do not justify the means.  You can see where this would have applications in both the real world and the movie.  In the film, Evelyn believes that beating up a bunch of guys is acceptable in trying to prevent a larger war.  She also resorts to outright revenge when Mike is killed before her eyes.  Between the deception and the violence, this is not exactly “turn the other cheek” behavior.  One can make the argument that not acting would lead to a worse situation.  That could be, but the only way we can best speculate on such things is after the fact.  I had this thought while watching the movie.  How different would it have been had Evelyn stayed in the interrogation room in the beginning instead of becoming the world’s most wanted person?  Another position could be that at least she did the right thing in the end by helping to prevent the death the two world leaders, thus preventing nuclear war.  The problem is that she had to do a whole lot of wrong in order to make things right.  It is not easy in the moment to remember that God is ultimately in control, and that there is an ultimate punishment for the unrepentant.  In the meantime, I pray you never find yourself in a similar situation.

The situation I found myself in while watching Salt was me trying to remember plot details from almost fifteen years ago when I saw this in the theaters.  The one thing that did come to mind was Ted being a traitor in the end.  Otherwise, it is pretty standard action fare, so make of that what you will.