SALT

Great action movies are thrilling and enjoyable, and SALT is a great action movie.  It provides that wonderful sense of tension, and doesn’t release you until it’s ready to.

I have read criticism that the movie and its main character, Evelyn Salt, are implausible – but that’s the exact beauty of it, and Angelina Jolie was the exact beauty to be playing Evelyn Salt.

There is a difference between “naturalism” and “romanticism” in art – the natural school wants to display people as they are in their normal every day, supposedly “natural”, settings; the romantic school provides characters that are performing the extraordinary – those who have superior gifts and display them proudly.

As philosopher and author Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead) so brilliantly noted, “(Romanticism) does not record or photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be.”  Evelyn Salt is the creation and projection of a romantic character in every sense of the word

Evelyn Salt is a well-regarded CIA Agent.  One day, a man walks into CIA headquarters to offer a juicy piece of intelligence – his name is Vassily Orlov.  Salt is asked to interrogate him, and the plot wastes no time in developing on the heels of this great exchange:

Salt – “What is your name?”

Orlov – “My name is Vassily Orlov.  Today a Russian agent will travel to New York City to kill the Russian President.  This agent is KA-12.”

Salt – “The KA program is a myth.”

Orlov – “Don’t you want to know the name?”

Salt – “You’re good.  You can tell the rest of your story to my colleagues.”

Orlov – “Salt.”

Salt – “Yes?”

Orlov – “The name of that agent is Evelyn Salt.”

Salt – “My name is Evelyn Salt.”

Orlov – “Then you are a Russian spy.”

Salt – “I’m not a goddamn Russian spy.”

At this moment, the movie slips into high gear.  Salt’s co-workers obviously want to find out what’s going on and pin her down inside the CIA headquarters.  She first desperately wants to reach her husband, but they won’t let her.  In Bourne-like fashion, she sets out to escape and elude them – first from CIA headquarters and then from the city.  In riveting chase scenes, she manages to escape.

And the audience is left wondering whether she is indeed the intended assassin or has been set-up.  There is the development of a mysterious story drifting back some 30 years to Russia about young children that were taken and highly trained from that young age to be of use later in life as imbedded spies.  Is Evelyn one of them?  Is she a double-agent or a mole?

As she’s running from the CIA – without so much as a blink of an eye, Salt is now in gear to “kill” the Russian President and seems to do so by outsmarting the best of the best.  Alas, no more plot spoilers will follow here.  Suffice it to say, the rest of the story is a great thriller and mystery as the audience tries to grasp who Evelyn Salt really is and whose side she’s on.

This movie is fun, thrilling, pro-American and offers a fantastic plot.  Highly recommended.

Rob Flitton
www.robflitton.com

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

Original Sin is a concept in religion that man is born evil or sinful. It proposes that the cure to this evil is to spend one’s entire life earning goodness by finding one’s way back to God through altruistic servitude to others and through rejection of materialism.

In ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’, Director Oliver Stone similarly proposes that all men have an inherently evil nature and that the highest manifestation of his evil nature is the practice of capitalism. Therefore, in Stone’s world view, it would follow that the sins of capitalism can only be absolved through altruistic servitude to others and through rejection of materialism, and he sets out to prove this through the development of his primary characters.

There are seven primary characters in this mixed-up, sloppy movie that ineptly explains the bubble burst of the economy – it seeks to lay the blame at the inherently greedy nature of man, as Stone views it.

Jake Moore (Shia LeBeouf) is a young up-and-coming financial analyst on Wall Street, and his love interest is Winnie Gekko, none other than the daughter of Gordon Gekko.

Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan) is an ardent left-wing blogger, who claims to be disinterested in money, but who lives with Jake in a trendy and expensive Manhattan loft.  She doesn’t seem bothered by what comforts money can bring her, and comes across a juvenile.

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), famous for his line “greed is good” from the 1987 prequel, has now been out of prison for a few years and written a best-selling book which is ostensibly an attempt to explain and absolve himself of his prior penchant for greed (to us, the movie-going audience). He spent a lengthy sentence in prison for insider trading. The day he left prison, no one was waiting for him.  Countering the prequel, we learn it was not Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen, who also makes an ill-timed and corny cameo appearance) that caused him to go to prison.

Louis Zabel (Frank Langella), bow-tie and all, is part of the royalty of Wall Street. He owns one of the major financial houses, and was responsible for guiding Jake Moore from a youthful caddie at his private golf club into a Wall Street player. Near the beginning we see Zabel giving Jake a bonus check for more than a million dollars, and predicting doom for the market.

Bretton James (Josh Brolin) is another major Wall Street player, and one of Zabel’s primary competitors. The doom for the market which Zabel predicted happens, and this is a representation of the real crash in the market of a few years ago – the firm names are changed, but it is clearly meant to represent Goldman Sachs, et. al. James and his much older partner Jules Steinhardt (Eli Wallach) are members of the Federal Reserve, and so is Zabel. Called into a major meeting of the reserve to advise the White House how to avert imminent disaster, Zabel is thrown under the bus and James and Steinhardt swallow his company and his life whole for nickels on the dollar.

Zabel, unable to stomach his life being swallowed whole, then kills himself.

Jake Moore’s mother (Susan Sarandon) is a real estate agent on Long Island who is buried deep in several real estate ventures as a result of the bubble. One can tell that real estate was once good to her, but now she constantly hawks Jake for sizable loans to keep her afloat.

Despite this fairly deep character development, it is essentially not well-thought out, and the obtuse plot subsequently suffers from a major identity-crisis.

Jake goes out of his way to meet Gordon Gekko behind Winnie’s back, motivating by meeting the legend and reuniting Gekko and Winnie. Winnie resists and warns Jake how dangerous Gekko really is under his new soft exterior.

One senses that Gekko is probably working some angle despite being an innocuous character. Gekko tells Jake that it was Bretton James (not Bud Fox) that put him in prison and he knows it. Jake also discovers that the actions of James and Steinhardt led to the death of Louis Zabel, and sets out for what amounts to a confusing revenge – he first fuels rumors costing James and Steinhardt a fortune, but then gleefully goes to work for him trying to forge some sketchy green-energy investment deal to please Winnie.

Sadly, to Oliver Stone, all of these characters represent some aspect of what destruction that the “sin” of capitalism leads to.

Gekko’s capitalism imprisoned for fraud, cost him his family, and then he became aimless and benign. Stone makes it so that Jake can only be moral if he throws aside all reason and pursues some green solution to energy usage, devoid of all profit motives. Billionaire James is a duplicitous predator bent solely on overindulgent opulence. Zabel is shown to achieve nothing in the end, which alleges that capitalism is not only immoral but futile. Steinhardt is a soulless old man who built his wealth over the bodies of countless hundreds. The bland Winnie, who has no materialism, is the “hero” – if there is one. Jake’s mother is sad and unhappy pursuing real estate until she sinks rock-bottom and returns to nursing.

Winnie lives in her trendy, expensive loft and controls a $100 million bank account in Switzerland entrusted to her by Gekko while he was away. In the climax – again, if there is one – Gekko cons Jake and Winnie to hand over the $100 million (they thought it would be invested in the green-energy thing).  And this is an awful thing Stone does.  It was Gekko’s money that he earned and he portrays Gekko as a thief for simply wanting it back.  This causes Jake and Winnie to split – even though she’s pregnant.

It is sad that Stone fails to realize that “greed” is the idea that one should attempt to acquire “unearned” material values.  However, capitalism would regard this definition of greed as a violation of another’s individual or property rights – whereas, capitalism is the antithesis of this and the social/political system that bans the taking of the unearned.

Under capitalism, the predatory theft of individual and property rights would be banned.

I had erroneously assumed that ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’, would make a direct frontal attack against capitalism. However, the attack instead comes in the form of an obtuse plot with far too many moving pieces and the stupidity of the character-development.

Thankfully, it doesn’t succeed, because capitalism is badly needed.

 

 

Rob Flitton
www.robflitton.com

WOMEN ONLY: A Brief Course on Negotiation – Part 2 of 3

In part one of this series, I discussed “winning” in negotiation – with the motive of validating those women who want to win fairly at the bargaining table and of demystifying some of the obstacles that keep them from doing so.

When negotiating with another person or group, you are trying to either buy or sell something, or trying to change view and opinions – in either case, the best results stem from “communication skills.”

The initial activity of smart negotiation is “research” – i.e., of gathering useful information while resisting the temptation to make any decisions.  Good communication skills allow you to win people over and gain as much information as possible from them without betraying your own values or secrets.

The subsequent activity of smart negotiation is to communicate well-crafted and creative proposals – or to actively consider or counter the proposals of the other side. And the key aspect of crafting great negotiation deals is communication.

It is commonly taken for granted that women are better communicators than men, and yet here is a man offering women advice on communicating in negotiations – the reason is that the vast majority of both men and women make serious communication mistakes in business.

It is my experience with the women who I have coached in negotiation that when they are committed to and active-minded about really understanding communicative issues, they gain a wonderful new level of success, relaxed self-confidence, and stellar reputation. And here is the structure of what I recommend:

Face-to-Face. Negotiate face-to-face wherever possible.

Consistency. Being inconsistent in communicating makes someone seem flaky and unreliable.  Someone who has irregular patterns and content cannot be trusted.

Absolute Accuracy. It is fundamentally important to never say or communicate anything that isn’t correct.

Vision and Clarity. A great negotiator is able to create and present an attractive vision or idea that other wants to buy into and accept.

Proper Grammar. Poor grammar communicates a lack of value, interest, education and intelligence.  How does someone expect to negotiate a meaningful business deal when the other party doesn’t have confidence that they can even write out the contract?

Don’t Drive Agendas. Someone who drives an agenda is manipulative.  He or she provides their feelings or subjective evaluation of the facts before or without providing the actual facts.

Say Things Nicely. There is rarely a need to be rude or harsh when telling someone something controversial about themselves or their product – saying such things nicely takes effort and sensitivity.

Admit the Negatives. Admit mistakes or negativity without blame, excuse or qualification.

Deliver Bad News Promptly. If you have something negative or controversial you need to tell someone, you lose trust, friendship and appreciation by sitting on the information.

Relevancy. Agreement can be thwarted by detracting from the relevant context and from what’s germane or at hand.

Don’t Banter Aimlessly. There is always proper context and timing for being carefree in communicating, and the midst of negotiating is neither the right context nor time.

Part 3 … STAY TUNED!

Rob Flitton
www.robflitton.com