Lanyon Valley Anglican Church

The premise of Salt alone is enough to sell tickets: A CIA agent is interviewing a Russian man who wants to defect to America. The Russian knows the identity of a Russian spy, planted in the CIA, who is going to kill the Russian Prime Minister. The spy’s name is Evelyn Salt. The CIA agent replies “But that’s my name.” “Then you must be a Russian spy.” Now that’s a great way to start a movie. Salt (played by Angelina Jolie) goes on the run. Is she trying to clear her name or is she really a Russian spy? Unfortunately, the movie never manages to equal or better these opening moments.

Sure, there are some great action sequences. But as the movie goes on, these stunts become more and more unbelievable. At the start of the movie, she’s a well-trained woman acting out of desperation. By the end of the movie, she’s achieving super human feats. You’d think the CIA would have sent her to Iraq, because if the end of the movie is any indication, she could have singlehandedly defeated the entire Iraqi army and assassinated Saddam Hussein in about 45 minutes. The action sequences at the start had me interested. The sequences at the end had my snoozing. By the way, this is not a good thing. The performances are okay at best. It feels like everyone involved is just going through the motions. Worst of all, the relationship between Salt and her husband is severely underplayed. Which is a problem because this relationship is the lynch pin of the film. It needed a lot more screen time and a lot more attention to make it work. These two are meant to be crazily in love. At the end of the day, there wasn’t enough there for me to buy into it. And that hurts the movie.

Salt wants you to consider the question: Who is Salt? Is she a CIA agent falsely accused of being a Russian spy? Or is she a Russian spy who has infiltrated the CIA? It’s an intriguing question. Let’s turn it on you. There’s a good chance, if you’re reading this, that you’re a Christian. But what about the public ‘you’, the one on display to everyone? Are you an undercover Christian? Underneath, your loyalty is to Christ, but no one would ever know it by looking at you. Your friends think you’re an everyday non-Christian. That is until someone asks you, in front of all your mates, how church was on Sunday. Suddenly, the truth is out there. How about looking at it from the other direction. You’re publicly a Christian. Everyone knows that you’re a follower of Jesus. But then someone will catch you doing something, or point out how you acted at that party on Saturday night. And they’ll ask you: are you really a Christian? Because a Christian wouldn’t act that way.

Neither of these situations are good. If you are part of God’s family, you can’t be living two lives.  “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12) You can’t point people to God if you’re a closet Christian. And if you’re not living a Christian life that is beyond accusation, then you will struggle to show people how incredible our God is. There is no room for sleeper agents in the Christian life.

Salt is a movie with a great premise but lack lustre execution. It’s the kind of movie you see when you want to watch an action movie and don’t really care if the movie makes sense or offers anything more than a few gunfights.

Written by Joel A Moroney for Fervr; simply the best website for Christian youth.

Have you ever had a dream that was so ridiculously cool you thought it could be a movie? Did you try to write it down? Or explain it to your mates? Yeah? You did? And how did it go?

Often, trying to translate dreams into reality is about as successful as an ice block surviving in a sauna. Dreams have a pesky habit of being so weird and indescribable that, um, we’re all unable to describe them because they’re so weird.

But the guy who made The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan, has somehow put together an entire film about people constructing and controlling dreams – while inside someone’s head!!

Nolan’s Inception is the first blockbuster since the mind-bending The Matrix (1999) to be as committed to making your brain hurt as it is to delivering slo-mo thrills and epic explosions.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a smarty pants who – with the help of some fancy gizmo – can enter his own dreams, or those of others. With a team of top-notch technicians including Juno’s Ellen Page and 500 Days Of Summer’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt, DiCaprio descends deep into the dream world of a businessman set to inherit his dad’s empire.

Trying to explain Inception in a few sentences is tough, and not a nice thing to do for those who have yet to see it. Indeed, this complicated movie is best enjoyed when you don’t know much about it and have to work it out for yourself. Let’s just say Cobb and his team break in to dreams to steal things or implant ideas, and this involves gravity-defying fights, thoughtful guidelines and a big blurring of what is and is not real.

Depending upon where your life is at, living in a dream can sound pretty appealing. Sweet dreams can be places where you get everything you want and all the bad stuff of this world gets kicked to the curb.

As Cobb experiences in Inception, though, trying to live in a dreamworld also can become a nightmare when we try to avoid and run away from real issues.
How guilt, remorse, deception and emotional/psychological strain invades Cobb sub-conscious and imagination is hardly meant to be realistic but it should make you think about the ways you deal with difficulties or stress.

Rather than employ Leonardo DiCaprio to enter your brain and rewrite your dreams, Christians have a real, available and powerful God to call upon for assistance – whether you are, or are not, “living the dream”.

As Jesus explains in Matthew 6, between verses 25 and 31 (NIV): “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear…. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

In other words, The Master Of The Universe is ready and waiting to help those who are troubled yet trust in His loving support. Sure, Inception is full of amazing concepts and excellent visuals, but there’s no way we can really “live the dream” without relying upon his assistance.

Written by Ben McEachen for Fervr; simply the best website for Christian youth.