Physical media may be making a much-deserved comeback, but there’s one aspect of the pre-streaming boom that these new film collections just aren’t able to replicate. There’s a selective air towards the practice of building a film library now, but how many of us are filling our shelves with films that are just... okay? Before Netflix and its competitors took over the world, most family dens were filled with DVDs and Blu-Rays of average to abysmal action flicks, often grabbed from Walmart’s $5 bin or rented from Blockbuster and never returned.
Salt was one such film in my house, and against all odds, it became the go-to on movie nights when no one could agree on what to watch. Later, it grew into a tentative favorite, even if the spy thriller is every bit a relic of the perpetually paranoid Cold War era. It’d be right at home alongside The Sum of All Fears or the James Bond films of the early 2000s, probably because its script had been in development since 2002. It briefly had legs as a star vehicle for Tom Cruise, but when he rejected the film to star in Knight and Day (remember that?), it was retooled as the potential first installment of an Angelina Jolie spy franchise.
