Salt

Angelina Jolie stars in this fast-paced action thriller directed by Phillip Noyce ("The Quiet American", "Rabbit-Proof Fence").  Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative who was held prisoner some years back while on a mission in North Korea.  While there, she meets and falls in love with her mark and subsequently ends up marrying him after her rescue.  Now, Salt is happily juggling married life and her job, despite her incredibly dangerous line of work.  But when a mysterious stranger breaks into the CIA and claims that Salt is a Russian sleeper agent, she must go on the run to prove her innocence and find her husband before the people trying to frame her get to him first.  Jolie is simply electrifying in this movie and plays Salt with equal parts calculated hardness and vulnerablity.  In a role that was originally written for a man (and briefly linked to Tom Cruise), it definitely lends itself well to a female lead, and Jolie proves that she can easily go toe-to-toe with any male in the action genre arena.  Noyce - who, up until this point, has mostly done quiet thrillers - also demonstrates his adeptness here at creating edge-of-your-seat chase sequences (my heart was in my throat during most of a scene involving Salt jumping from car-top to car-top on a double-decker highway).  All that would make for a fairly-satisfying, mindless spy flick, if there wasn't also a pretty intelligent script with plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing.  Throw in a couple of seasoned actors as Salt's colleagues - the always amazing and reliably competent Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor - and you've got the perfect formula for a smart action thriller.  "Salt" is high-speed, nail-biting fun, with a charismatic heroine, and a cleverness that won't have you feeling devoid of a few brain cells afterwards.


4 out of 5 stars