Decent action/adventure with stellar cast

Rating: 5/10 (23 July 2010)

I had my trepidations about seeing Angelina Jolie take on another female swashbuckling role like she did in "Laura Croft: Tomb Raider" or "Wanted," but after viewing Phillip Noyce's "Salt," I was indeed pleasantly surprised. Not too much, mind you, but enough to give the movie a slight recommendation.
Pleasantly surprised is, by the way, an emotion I am not used to while attending many films these days.
Noyce, who directed "Patriot Games," "Clear and Present Danger," "The Quiet American" and "Catch a Fire," among other pictures, does a fairly good job in setting up the plot and letting the action sweep you along until a few twists (some good, some not so) hurl us towards the somewhat haphazard conclusion.
Speaking of twists, while I could see the main one coming from a mile away, I was still not too disappointed because the derring-do and escape scenes were quite well done. And although it came close to becoming "The Manchurian Candidate" (the 1962 version, thank you) meets the Bourne film series meets "Children of the Damned," there was enough originality and action to keep me glued to the screen.
Some critics have called it banal and hokum, but for my money, there isn't much else out there for adults other than "Inception," so for now, I'll bide my time until "Dinner For Schmucks" comes along.
The story has Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who happens to an expert in Russian affairs. That's funny, because while interrogating a former Soviet bigwig, Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski, "Break Point"), she is accused of being a Russian spy — in front of her superior, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber, "Taking Woodstock," "The Manchurian Candidate," 2004 version) and FBI honcho, Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor, "Inside Man," "American Gangster").
Sensing the possibility that she might be a mole, Peabody plans to give her the third-degree, but she's too smart for that, becoming a female MacGyver, building a homemade bazooka out of a table leg and some cleaning fluid.
She then takes a powder to search for her German national husband, Michael (August Diehl, "Inglourious Basterds"). She finds he's been kidnapped and then finds out she was born in the USSR, indoctrinated to hate America and then sent to live in the US as a child.
Orlov also told her that she would assassinate the Russian president, so she goes through with it — right in the middle of the US vice president's funeral. Captured by police, Evelyn stages more incredible escapades, one, in which she forces a New York City police officer to drive her getaway car by constantly tasering him, does push the bounds of incredulity just a bit too far ...
Peabody, meanwhile, is chasing after her like Sam Gerard after Dr. Richard Kimble, wanting nothing more than to blow her away. Winter, on the other hand, has worked with Salt and cannot believe she is involved in such shenanigans.
Neither can we. It just doesn't seem right with Jolie being a Russian killer and trying to foment a war between the two superpowers. But, then just about the time we think she might be the bad guy, she does a 180 and offs a bunch of Soviet espionage agents on a barge in the East River.
One could get whiplash from the plot jolts here. And don't even get me started on the spastic nature of the conclusion.
Look, this movie is not about to win any awards, but is competent enough to entertain (I did not write "enlighten") for its relatively short running time of 100 minutes. Schreiber pretty much phones this one in and Jolie is appropriately gritty and stoic, using her pouting lips and high cheekbones to her advantage as a Russian waif/super secret agent.
The best performance here is Ejiofor. Although not given a whole lot to work with, he manages to be compelling enough whenever on screen to illicit audience interest.