Salt

The people who wrote this film apparently don't think the audience is very smart. They want us to believe that Angelina Jolie who is about five foot four in her bare feet and 100 pounds wringing wet is capable of beating up and shooting about sixty people, crawling around a ten story building on a narrow ledge, jumping from tractor trailer to tractor trailer and climbing down a ten story elevator shaft! Boy she is one tough, ass kicking mama! Some people have said this movie is merely a clone of the Jason Bourne movies (one reviewer waggishly called Salt Jason Bourne with a vagina). However, Jolie makes her role distinctly unique. She holds this movie together with cool intensity that would rival any actor. The plot is convoluted and hard to follow but there is enough action for five movies, so just sit back and enjoy the ride. By the way, for you history lovers, there really was a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald had a Soviet lookalike who was the real killer of JFK and there really is an underground bunker below the White House.

While I can't say that I was awaiting Angelina Jolie's latest outing with bated breath, I was intrigued by the fact that Salt was originally intended to be a Tom Cruise vehicle.

Tom's waning box office pulling-power aside, this sex-swap was a smart move by writer Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) as it gives Jolie the chance to prove that she can lay the smack-down on just as many henchmen as the boys can. Having her rather than him as the duplicitous CIA agent Evelyn Salt, Wimmer gives a fresh angle to a plot that could easily have been a boring instalment of the Bourne series. Salt also sees the welcome return of Russian villains to the cinema after a long period in which Middle Eastern terrorists were severely over-worked.

When a Soviet defector strolls into the CIA and announces that Salt is a sleeper agent who will kill the Russian president, she goes on the run. Fearing for the safety of her husband Michael, Salt sets out to find him before agents Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) catch up with her. The question of where Salt's loyalties lie is the true source of tension and Jolie plays it cool, gaining and dismissing the audience's trust several times over.

Schreiber and Ejiofor draw the short straws in terms of dialogue and simply run after Jolie for the entire movie without doing anything of significance. Hopefully, if the proposed sequel goes ahead, Wimmer will be able to correct this glaring oversight.

The action scenes are sharply directed and Jolie finally gets her hands dirty, particularly in the opening exchanges where she's being tortured in a Korean prison. If that wasn't enough, she also flies down an elevator shaft by leaping from wall to wall – it was a silly effect but added a cheesy, fanciful element to what would have been an entirely too serious movie.

Consequently the first 40 minutes are fast and furious as Salt evades her fellow agents by any means necessary but not to be outdone, the rest of the film takes a left turn and continues to surprise with some serious fisticuffs, gun-play and high-speed car chases. Admittedly, for all its skill and enthusiasm, Salt's finale is a little over-the-top and it wanders into well-worn ground without knowing when to stop. Aside from this minor gripe, Salt is a well-directed action movie that delivers us a potential new franchise, an intriguing lead character and an exciting close to a lacklustre summer.

Many reviewers here have stated that this movie isn't realistic because 'Salt doesn't get bruised enough' or 'no one her size could...' Have these people ever been to an action movie before? NO ACTION MOVIE IS REALISTIC. They are all written to be over-the-top because that's what makes them entertaining. We suspend disbelief to enter the world of the action-hero (or heroine) and we go along for the thrilling ride that is sometimes so over-the-top it's ridiculous! But that's what makes it fun. If action movies were realistic, they would be slow and boring. This movie does not cross the line anymore than any other action movie.

Salt delivers exactly what is promised -- a solid 100 minutes of action. It keeps you watching, it keeps you guessing (even when it turns out you were right in some cases), and it entertains from start to finish. If you like the action movie genre, chances are you will enjoy this movie.

As for the reviewers who criticized the way Russians are portrayed, the action genre plays to comic book-like caricatures. The villains are no more realistic than the heroine! This isn't a documentary!

If you like action movies, give Salt a go. Angelina won't disappoint.

While I was expecting a little more sophistication in the plot department I realized that such a thing couldn't happen when US versus Russia is at play. (To my knowledge the Cold War is over and the spy business has become more complicated than ever. This oversimplification of old enemies and their wars is too much.) The plot is all over the place and realism is thrown out of the door. There are too many things happening in the movie that are too convenient and even impossible. Still it didn't keep me from enjoying this movie. It even managed to thrill me at occasions even if I was aware that most of the plot was nonsense. Jolie does an excellent job as the action heroine. The action is that makes this movie tick and that is almost the only thing that should count in a movie like this.Ignore the bashing and trashing of Jolie. This is pure entertainment!

When Bruce Willis makes crash landings in the original "Die Hard" movie, at least he winces in pain and it takes him a few moments to regain composure. In "Salt", when Angelina Jolie jumps consecutively onto six moving trucks on the freeway, she's flying right up and instantly running at Olympic record pace, sort of like the original Terminator except sporting lipstick. Throughout the movie, she decks secret service agents faster than they can graduate out of combat training if she's not pushing out of moving vehicles going 70 mph while wearing handcuffs, although the officers forgot to put the cuffs on behind her. They put them on in front of her leaving her with a slight chance to get away. I guess the point of this movie: don't try this at home.

The essential plot I think is quite compelling, and I don't want to give too much away but only to say that nothing is at it seems until the very end. But I think I would have liked more of the mystery behind the story than all the long action sequences which I felt undermined a potentially complex idea. These days in filmmaking, it seems that the longer action sequences displace story development. There are flashbacks to a greater story but a lot of it was more confusing than insightful.

After a brief prelude in which Jolie is interrogated and tortured by North Korean military agents, the movie begins, presumably about a year later, with a Russian requesting asylum with the United States via the CIA. Agent Evelyn Salt (Jolie) interrogates the defector who tells a strange story about how the Russians infiltrate the United States with moles programmed and brainwashed during childhood. Only seconds after the interview is over, the defector is killing CIA agents and escaping the headquarters. And so is Salt. In fact, the agency is more determined to get Salt than the defector, which is one of the many little glaring plot problems that occur during this movie. The non-stop action begins here, fueled by several plots and subplots.

I think Salt is a decent film but not a great one. At least what it does successfully is keep you guessing. You're not sure what Salt is doing, where she's going, or even whose side she's on which keeps you at the edge of your seat. By movies end, I still had a lot of unanswered questions that were not explained through the action sequences. I also realized at one point, Jolie doesn't say much after the initial interview until the very end. It's hard not to like Jolie but I think she should have requested a bit of a better script with a little bit less chasing, gunning and blowing things up. Jolie can also act, not just chase.