'Salt' review

Angelina Jolie (Credit: K.C. Bailey/Sony)

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CIA officer Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) looks forward to a happy anniversary evening with her husband (August Diehl), but she’s about to get a major hurdle thrown in her path. Her interrogation of a mysterious Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) reveals that a Cold War-era “sleeper agent” is about to reawaken and carry out a diabolical mission. And her name happens to be Evelyn Salt. Evelyn’s colleague Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) is stunned by the accusation, but fellow agent William Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants to keep Evelyn under custody. Eager to clear her name and ensure her husband’s safety, Salt breaks out of her own office building and goes on the run.

The buzz: Originally written for a male lead, “Salt” gained some early publicity when Jolie “replaced” Tom Cruise in the starring role. Jolie has been building up a solid action track record with “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Wanted,” but this is her first real solo action star turn since the “Tomb Raider” days. Assisting her is director Phillip Noyce, who directed Harrison Ford’s Jack Ryan thrillers “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger” back in the ’90s, previously collaborated with Jolie on limp 1999 thriller “The Bone Collector” and spent the decade since working on smaller films like “The Quiet American” and “Rabbit-Proof Fence.”

The verdict: “Salt” has moments of genuine action excitement, but too often settles for imitation over originality. It’s “The Fugitive” meets “ Mission: Impossible” in a post-“Bourne” era, with one thing all those movies lacked: Jolie. While “Salt” twists and turns its way along a slightly too predictable path, Jolie continually grounds every elaborate action scene and emotional reveal with conviction. It helps that Noyce slips comfortably back into Jack Ryan mode, bringing a sleek sheen to government agency operations, chase scenes and larger scale mayhem. It hurts that Diehl is such a non-entity and Schreiber and Ejiofor aren’t given roles that match their notable skills. But even with so little to back her up, Jolie still works wonders. She succeeds where Russell Crowe, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage and the entire “A-Team” have already failed this summer, and elevates a middling action movie with the power of a fiercely charismatic movie star.

Did you know? One of the biggest challenges the filmmakers faced was building a credible version of the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (a.k.a. “the bunker”) where the U.S. President flees during an attack. Noyce claimed the team received some inside information about what the bunker looked like pre-9/11 but had to guess at what kind of updates might have been made since.

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