Total girl power, with Jolie at the helm

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2011)

Apparently 2010's "Salt" was intended for Tom Cruise, but was rewritten for a woman when he backed out. The story is about a CIA agent, Evelyn Salt, who spends time in a prison in North Korea and only is released because of the nonstop efforts of her boyfriend (August Diehl), whom she marries.
Ready to leave the office to celebrate their anniversary, Salt is asked to help interrogate a spy (Daniel Olbrychski) who has information and wants to defect. The spy, Orlov, claims that the Russian president will be assassinated at the vice-president's funeral by one of the many agents who were infiltrated into the American system by Russia: Evelyn Salt.
Salt claims this is absurd, but seeing the looks on the faces of her boss (Liev Schreiber) and Secret Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Salt realizes that they are going to keep her at the agency and question her. Desperate to reach her husband for fear he's been liquidated, Salt breaks out and escapes. What follows is a breathless chase that has Salt scaling buildings from the outside, jumping onto trucks, blowing up offices, and killing.
Directed by Phillip Noyce and written by Kurt Wimmer, this is an incredible action film on the same level as one of the "Bourne" movies, done at a lightning fast pace. Jolie, who did most of her own stunts, is remarkable as a tough, clever, resourceful, and athletic agent.
The film moves so quickly that one is tempted to overlook some of the plot holes. If I like a movie, as I did here, I let them slide, as I will now, but I need to point them out because they're pretty glaring. The first one is, how is it possible that the CIA, for corn's sake, has no idea that Orlov, the spy who wants to defect, has a knife hidden in his shoe? The second one is far worse -- when Peabody tells Salt that no one will believe her story of what happened in the activation room, one wonders how this is possible. There are cameras in the hallways, the elevators, in the deepest recesses, yet in a room where an activating device for a nuclear attack is located, and where the President of the United States has to be to put in the code -- no cameras? No way to see what went on? Please! I'm sure there are others, and I realize the entire story is preposterous, but for me, this was a little too much dramatic license. I did love it, and I can't wait for the sequel. I hope there is one.