Enjoyable Nonsense

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2011)

A far- fetched, but action packed, knockabout spy yarn that defies rational analysis but is entertaining enough. Angelina Jolie stars as Salt, the CIA operative who is ostensibly outed by a Russian defector. What follows is an increasingly preposterous series of stunts and plot developments saved by some very good action scenes.
Director Phillip Noyce knows his way around the spy/action genre through the Tom Clancy conceived Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, and also The Saint. The opening scene has a suitably lascivious shot of Salt being tortured in her underwear. Thereafter she dispatches America's and Russia's finest with ease.
The Russian stereotypes are lazy, and the sacrifice of realism for action ludicrous. Yet it is all well done, the story zips along going from one set-piece action sequence to the next. Jolie struggles with the script, a small part of it is trying to be a bona fide spy yarn, but for the rest she is Lara Croft, a fantasy indestructible Amazon.
Not to be taken too seriously.