Blue Entertainment

It's pretty hard to forget August Diehl in one of the truly great scenes of "Inglourious Basterds." Brad Pitt sure didn't.

When it came time to casting a husband for Angelina Jolie in "Salt," the star's real-life husband piped in and suggested the excellent Diehl.

"Brad had said what a strong actor he was," director Phillip Noyce tells PopcornBiz. "And we were looking for someone with no baggage. We wanted a fresh face -- to keep the audience off guard."

The careful observer will recall that there is actually some baggage. Diehl is such a menacing presence in his beer hall scene of "Basterds," that he's really hard to forget.

But he's almost unrecognizable in "Salt." Amazingly, he does a 180 degree temperament turn -- playing a sensitive, warm husband apparently truly devoted to the study of spiders and his wife. Diehl actually has very warm smile lines on his face, an expression he didn't use at all in "Basterds."

"Yes he was quite ruthless in 'Basterds,' " says Noyce. "But if you're wearing a swastika emblem that gave you a lot of power."

And in "Salt" the actor was able to portray "the innocence and temperament of the man that Salt falls in love with."

"He's just a great actor," says Noyce. We couldn't agree more.

The question is, which is the real Diehl?

Can you feel the excitement? In a mere four days, Inception will hit theaters, melt your face and take its rightful place as the biggest non-animated film of the summer. At least until Salt comes out next week and blows Inception out of the water. Wait, what? Ahead, Movieline dissects why Angelina Jolie’s summer action spectacle is poised to win the box office war with Christopher Nolan’s pedigreed mind-bender.



· Angelina Jolie
While Leonardo DiCaprio is forced to share the Inception marketing campaign with a cadre of character actors — he didn’t even get Russell Hammond status in the movie poster! — Angelina Jolie is the marketing campaign for Salt. And you know why? She’s the biggest actress in the world and probably behind only Will Smith and Johnny Depp on the worldwide-fame scale. People love Jolie; they like Leonardo DiCaprio. Don’t believe me? DiCaprio only has one $40-plus million opener on his resume (Shutter Island), Jolie has three.

· The release date
After Salt gets released on July 23, the summer might as well be over from a four-quadrant standpoint. To wit: The remaining releases are niche films with specific target audiences like Eat, Pray, Love, The Other Guys and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It just feels like Salt could be the one film that not only has legs, but will appeal to a wide variety of demographics. Inception probably will too — if only it didn’t slam into Salt seven days after its release.

· Running time
As Salt Fan Club president Jeffrey Wells revealed, Salt runs 95 minutes without credits; Inception runs for 148 minutes. Based on simple time telling skills, that means theaters will be able to squeeze more showings of Salt into a single day than Nolan’s epic. And that means a greater potential for dollars that even Inception’s IMAX screens won’t make up for.

· Accessibility
Without even seeing Salt, you can describe it to your friends in three words: Jolie as Bourne. Try using three words for Inception: Leo’s dream heist? Matrix with dreams? Bond as Matrix? Leo Ocean’s Matrix? Critics love it? Um, yeah. Inception might be better than Salt, but it certainly isn’t as straightforward.

· Expectations
The killer: With a sprawling cast, the “From the director of The Dark Knight” tag and maximum ubiquity, people are just plain expecting Inception to be the greatest movie of all-time (something critics are stoking with the comparisons to Stanley Kubrick). If/when Inception predictably falls short of all this hype, the backlash will begin fast and hard. Meanwhile, no one is expecting Salt to be anything other than a good-time action film with a major star doing crazy stunts. Advantage: Angelina.