A tight espionage thriller...

Rating: 7/10 (26 June 2011)

I remember when this one came out it got a lot of very mixed reviews. It has finally made it to the small screen and so I thought I'd have a look. It's certainly not as bad as some have said, but equally, it's not all that great either. I think it suffers from what I call the 'Bourne Effect', in that the 'Bourne' films are a pretty hard act to follow and just about every film of that ilk since has failed to hit the mark. Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly watchable but it just falls a bit short of the mark at those all important moments. Here's a brief summary.
Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent who is accused by a defector, known as Orlov, of being a Russian spy. She immediately goes on the run trying to get to he husband, Mike, who she believes is in danger. The defector also said that she would assassinate the Russian President at a funeral in New York. Her boss, Ted Winter, and the head of another department, Peabody, are in charge of tracking her down but she gives them the slip more than once. She has a plan and in order to carry it out she may have to compromise herself. I'm not going to say any more because I don't want a sniper picking me off while I'm eating a sandwich.
First of all I must say all of the stunt work on this film was first rate, I really enjoyed this aspect of the film very much. Performance wise, I thought Angelina Jolie did a great job as Evelyn Salt, considering the part was originally written for a male (Tom Cruise), I thought she was excellent. Liev Schreiber did a good job as Ted Winter, as did Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peabody and Daniel Olbrychski as Orlov.
There are many twists and turns in the plot and, of course, a big twist at the end that I'm afraid I saw coming from a mile off (sorry, no spoilers today). There were a couple of moments where the film did fall a little flat, but the pace was pretty much kept at a fairly high level throughout. I guess where it fails, in comparison with the 'Bourne' films, is that the plot just isn't quite clever enough to give it the edge it needed. But as I said earlier, it's perfectly watchable and suitably entertaining. I also like the fact that it has a female lead that is believable, so many of these films fail in that respect too. So, over all, great action sequences, a believable heroine and quite entertaining, if slightly flawed Still though, recommended.
My Score: 6.5/10