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Salt: film review.

Angelina Jolie, for all intents and purposes, is James Bond in her new film "Salt," and it's really no surprise that Jolie, the only female action star in Hollywood, more than measures up to Daniel Craig.

By Kirk Honeycutt

Kirk Honeycutt

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She never quite says: “The name is Salt . Evelyn Salt.” But Angelina Jolie , for all intents and purposes, is James Bond in her new film “Salt,” and it’s really no surprise that Jolie, the only female action star in Hollywood, more than measures up to Daniel Craig.

Donning several guises while on the run in Columbia’s spy thriller, she even — with the help of considerable facial latex, mind you — turns up as a guy in one scene. She makes a pretty ugly one, but it makes an amusing gag, a kind of acknowledgment that kick-ass action heroes now come in both genders. In Jolie’s case, it’s more convincing than ever because in those Lara Croft movies, she looked like an animated creature that popped out of a video game.

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While preposterous at every turn, “Salt” is a better Bond movie than most recent Bond movies, as its makers keep the stunts real and severely limit CGI gimmickry. This is a slick, light summer entertainment that should throw considerable coin into Sony’s coffers while re-establishing (if it needs re-establishing) Jolie’s bona fides as an action star. The film certainly didn’t need the assist, but recent news events have erased any objection from critics, tied to laws of plausibility, over the film’s key concept that Russian sleeper spies still exist in the U.S. long after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Another talking point here is the similarity between this film, reportedly first developed for Tom Cruise, and the action-spy thriller he chose to do, the lamentable “Knight and Day.” There are astonishing similarities: An American spy believed to be a rogue agent gets chased by the CIA, with the protagonist escaping by, among other tricks, leaping from one fast-moving vehicle to another on a major thoroughfare. These similarities only point up how smart “Salt” is in crafting its escapist fare.

Director Phillip Noyce and stunt guru Simon Crane, working from a clever though shallow screenplay by Kurt Wimmer, make sure the stunts in “Salt” look like a dangerous and demanding day at the office. In “Knight and Day,” the movie’s absurd physicality is played as effortless clowning replete with repartee that is supposed to remind you of 007 but in fact is embarrassingly flat and banal.

There’s no joking around here. Jolie’s Evelyn Salt is made of sterner stuff, the kind that can survive a North Korean prison without giving up the name of her employer, the CIA. Back in D.C. and married to a nice though naive German arachnologist (August Diehl) — yes, he studies spiders and, yes, there is a payoff to that — she is assigned to CIA desk duties when a supposed Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) walks in one day.

Nobody is particularly buying his act, especially Salt’s superior, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), but she accedes to his plea to interrogate the man briefly before she heads home to an anniversary dinner. The Russian talks nonsense about sleeper cells and a plot to assassinate the Russian president on American soil. Then he happens to drop the name of the Russian sleeper spy: Evelyn Salt.

This apparently is enough to turn the Agency’s counterintelligence officer, Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), into her instant foe. Nothing that happens after this deserves any serious scrutiny, but it’s fun to watch Jolie’s Salt seemingly transforms into the Russian sleeper agent she is reputed to be — escaping from a virtual lockdown, dodging cars and bullets, making her way to New York and through subway tunnels to confront the Russian president, then take on, seemingly, every Russian and CIA op in her way.

All those “seemingly” qualifiers are meant to indicate that no studio is going to cast Jolie as a villain or even an anti-hero. What do you think this is, the ’70s? But there’s just enough doubt for the ad copy to read: Who is Salt?

You can’t say the movie keeps you guessing about this for long since most attentive viewers will figure out the true villain(s) well before the climax. But the chase is the whole point.

Here Noyce and his team excel. Propelled by James Newton Howard’s nerve-teasing music and enhanced by Robert Elswit’s clear-eyed, smartly positioned cameras, “Salt” moves ever forward — pushing, pushing, pushing its heroine to greater feats every minute. It doesn’t stop for martinis, either shaken or stirred, or any other detours. The movie is lean and muscular, looking for action even in situations where a little sleight of hand might have done the trick.

You do wish that maybe it did slow down to consider the human factor. Salt is married; let’s dig into that. A marriage between an agent and a civilian is never explored. In making the husband a problem that needs solving, here — not to give anything away — the movie stumbles badly. At the end of the day, “who is Salt” is less a tagline than a criticism. Eventually, you know what Salt is. But who she is isn’t satisfactorily resolved.

In story terms, that is. In Hollywood terms, there’s never any doubt: Salt is Angelina Jolie.  

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Review by Brian Eggert July 23, 2010

Salt is an actionized spy yarn that has one thing going for it: the mystery as to the numerical value that should precede the title character’s agent status. Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, one of the CIA’s best, most indispensable agents. When a defecting Russian spy named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) fingers Salt as a deep-cover mole with plans to kill the Russian president, she makes a run for it. The question remains: Is she a double agent, a triple agent, or just a good employee of the CIA who’s wrongly accused of espionage? You’ll figure out the answer rather quickly, making the movie’s ensuing misdirections and double-crosses painful to endure.

What the movie does well is action. And audiences get plenty of it. Once Salt resolves to escape the CIA safehouse to find her husband (August Diehl, from Inglourious Basterds ), who may be in danger by whoever is trying to frame her, the movie becomes a nonstop chase sequence. It’s shot with a clear-cut approach thanks to experienced director Phillip Noyce ( Patriot Games ). A younger filmmaker would have undoubtedly employed unintelligible shaky-cam techniques, which never cease to baffle an audience as to what’s going on in the scene, so Noyce’s attention to detail is welcomed. Salt performs impressive leaps and bounds across the tops of cars. There’s hand-to-hand combat worthy of a Daniel Craig James Bond film. There’s plenty of gunfire and explosions and brutality (but nothing too violent, preserving the bloodless PG-13 rating). And there’s even some Jason Bourne-style wall-crawling.

Indeed, that’s not where the comparisons to The Bourne Identity end. Uncovering vast conspiracies involving super-secret mind control programs to produce ‘the ultimate assassin,’ the story enters all-too-familiar territory reaching back to The Manchurian Candidate . But the script by Equilibrium scribe Kurt Wimmer doesn’t bother with an involving mystery. The twists and turns are as predictable as can be, frustratingly so. Consider the characters, almost none of which we can trust because the script remains incredibly vague about their characterizations. So how can we tell who’s not what they appear to be? By the casting. When a movie about spies and deception has three notable names in the cast, you can bet one or more has something to hide. Those are the type of roles that actors love.

But then who’s the bad guy? I won’t reveal the secret in this review, but here are the candidates: First, there’s Salt. The movie keeps enough distance from Jolie’s character that the audience would be justified in suspecting her intentions. We never know for sure what she’s doing, if she’s plotting or merely reacting to the situation. But she has two CIA agents on her tail, and there’s a good chance one of them may have something to hide because, in movies, CIA agents always have something to hide. Salt’s longtime partner, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), wants only to trust her and bring her in for questioning. Whereas Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a CIA Internal Affairs operative, believes she’s a turncoat and wants her taken down. There’s potential here for a good guessing game, but it’s easy to deduce the culprit long before the movie wants us to.

Jolie has never been convincing in her many action roles. From her two Lara Croft movies to Wanted , she’s always been better suited to dramatic fare such as Changeling or Girl, Interrupted . Part of the problem is her recent overexposure in the media as a tabloid queen. It’s hard now to see beyond her tiring public persona and view Salt as anyone but Angelina Jolie in a wig. That said, the role was initially meant for Tom Cruise, who wouldn’t have improved the outcome much (he chose to make Knight and Day instead, rightly so). Cruise would have stuck out just as much as Jolie. Perhaps a no-name actor could have filled the role and made the movie more convincing, but nothing but a rewrite could have corrected the problems with the script.

By the third act, when Salt takes the audience into the White House for a convoluted presidential assassination plot, the movie has pushed our suspension of disbelief past the point where we might care about anything happening onscreen. The characters have all ceased to be interesting, the mystery is gone, and the only reason to watch is the action. And yet, the movie proceeds as if it still has some tricks up its sleeve, which it doesn’t. Spending 100 minutes with some well-constructed action will be enough for some viewers. But when the apparent potential for a clever spy thriller is passed up for a simple adrenaline rush, the result is a disappointment.

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Common Sense Media Review

Jolie's shallow, ludicrous thriller has lots of violence.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that action thriller Salt -- which stars Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent on the run -- is quite violent: There's lots of fighting, shooting, stabbing, killing, chases, and explosions, as well as a brief torture scene and a flashback scene suggesting that a child was beaten. Strong language…

Why Age 14+?

Heavy action violence, with lots of shooting, stabbing, fighting, punching, chas

The most frequent words used are "goddamn" and "s--t." "F--k" is used at once. A

Some romantic kissing. In one scene, Salt removes her panties from under her ski

One very prominent Pepsi billboard, a brief glimpse of a Heineken truck, and ima

The Russian spies drink a lot of vodka in a "background" way.

Any Positive Content?

The main message here seems to be "trouble could be lurking under your very nose

Salt is a hero who's made to look like a villain for most of the film. Her ultim

Violence & Scariness

Heavy action violence, with lots of shooting, stabbing, fighting, punching, chasing, and explosions. The heroine is tortured in the opening scene; she's pummeled, and gasoline is poured down her throat. A man kills two guards with a shoe knife. Salt is shot and wounded; she stabs and kills a man with a broken vodka bottle. A flashback of Salt as a little girl shows her bruised and clad in bandages, as if she had been horribly beaten.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

The most frequent words used are "goddamn" and "s--t." "F--k" is used at once. Also "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation), "damn," and "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some romantic kissing. In one scene, Salt removes her panties from under her skirt, using them to cover up and disable a security camera. She's also shown in her underwear during the opening scene. There's a shot of a Long Island bar called "Jugs and Strokers."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

One very prominent Pepsi billboard, a brief glimpse of a Heineken truck, and images of board games like Operation, Connect Four, and Othello.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

The main message here seems to be "trouble could be lurking under your very nose" -- Russian spies could be anywhere, and there's nothing you can do about it unless you're a trained super spy. A slightly more positive message is hidden for the purposes of a "twist" in the movie's plot.

Positive Role Models

Salt is a hero who's made to look like a villain for most of the film. Her ultimate aim is to prevent the world from being destroyed, but she also acts out of revenge. She kills many people during her journey and steals things whenever she needs them, and she never trusts anyone.

Parents need to know that action thriller Salt -- which stars Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent on the run -- is quite violent: There's lots of fighting, shooting, stabbing, killing, chases, and explosions, as well as a brief torture scene and a flashback scene suggesting that a child was beaten. Strong language isn't constant, but you'll hear both "f--k" and "s--t." Sexy stuff mostly stops at kissing (though one scene also features Salt removing her underwear from beneath her skirt), and some Russian spies drink vodka, but it's not prominent. Teen fans of Jolie and action may be intrigued, but it's not as entertaining as her 2008 hit Wanted . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (23)
• Kids say (55)

Based on 23 parent reviews

Jolie is a strong protagonist

Entertaining movie, what's the story.

CIA agent Evelyn Salt ( Angelina Jolie ) is just about to enjoy an anniversary dinner with her husband ( August Diehl ) when a Russian defector turns up and calmly claims that she's a Russian spy. She escapes, claiming to be looking for her now-missing husband, with agents Winter ( Liev Schreiber ) and Peabody ( Chiwetel Ejiofor ) hot on her trail. Appearing like a Russian spy but sometimes acting like an American agent, she must remain in hiding. And, at the same time, she must risk getting close to some of the world's most powerful leaders and potentially starting another world war to achieve her mysterious goals.

Is It Any Good?

SALT could have been a pretty good summer popcorn thriller, but director Phillip Noyce and Jolie lend it too much weight without providing any depth; it takes its silly plot a bit too seriously. And although it tries to throw in some twists and surprises, they're not very well executed or surprising. Plus, the action is uninspiring, and the characters don't have any real depth. Some flashbacks seem like a last-minute attempt to help explain just who Salt really is, but they don't help.

In other words, there's not much at stake here, and what's left isn't really that much fun. Only Jolie's sharp onscreen ferocity helps pass the time in an interesting way, but even she feels a bit bored and/or stranded by the lack of material and imagination.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in the film . How did it make you feel? Why do you think it worked that way?

Was Salt acting out of revenge or for the best interests of the country? Or both? If both, how did she balance the two?

Was Salt right in killing and stealing to reach her goal? Could she have reached it any other way?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 23, 2010
• On DVD or streaming : December 21, 2010
• Cast : Angelina Jolie , Chiwetel Ejiofor , Liev Schreiber
• Director : Phillip Noyce
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : Columbia Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 91 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : intense sequences of violence and action
• Last updated : September 30, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, all dirt roads taste of salt.

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“Slow. Take your time.” Isaiah ( Chris Chalk ) is coaching his eldest daughter to fish. Mack ( Kaylee Nicole Johnson ) takes in the moment, running her hand through the river’s muddy waters—an act she will repeat many more times throughout her life, as shown through the lens of Raven Jackson ’s debut feature, “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt.” She pets the catfish caught in her dad’s trap in a solemn way. She knows what comes next, even if she does not yet know how to prepare the fish for a meal. That knowledge will come from her mother, Evelyn ( Sheila Atim ). Her mother’s soothing instructions echo her father’s tips on catching fish: Slow. Take your Time.

Written and directed by Jackson, “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” is a poetic memoir of Mack’s life. Memories will appear one after another from her youngest days to her gray-haired years, non-sequentially, creating a winding road that bobs and weaves through mundane and life-defining moments alike. A death, a birth, first kiss, youthful misadventures, and sisterly moments shared only by Mack and her sister Josie ( Jayah Henry ). Jackson serves these slices of life portraits as if freshly picked from a tree and slivered into bite-sized servings, the way my grandfather used to cut up limes and hand them to my cousins and me while we piled in front of his old TV. 

In this otherwise unremarkable memory, I remember the feeling of the stubby gray carpet on my feet and legs and the red marks it left behind if we sat there for too long, my annoyance at my younger cousins’ inability to sit calmly on the couch through after school cartoons, and the way the fresh lime made our teeth feel like skin and our lips puckered red from its sourness. In her film, Jackson also channels these sensations in detailed close-ups of ribbons in the girls’ hair as they flutter in the wind, the funky pattern of grandma’s old blankets, the softness of cloth diapers, and the material of her characters’ clothes and how they drape off of their wearers’ bodies. It's a sensorial effect that transports us back when everything seemed new and fascinating to our young eyes, and it was easier to play on the ground while your mother was talking to the other grown-ups at parties.

“Slow. Take your time” can also be advice from the film’s gentle pacing. Memories fade one into the other, like raindrops falling into a stream. Water plays an important recurring role in Jackson’s film as a throughline between Mack’s past, present, and future, like using the sound of rain to tie together memories at different stages of her life or how a solitary bath before the birth of her daughter echoes an earlier memory of a baby-aged Mack taking a bath with her mom Evelyn years before. Jackson, along with cinematographer Jomo Fray , captures the characters and their surroundings in gorgeous 35mm, constructing each image and cut from editor Lee Chatametikool with a painterly precision that creates dreamlike visions out of everyday life. The film stock gives “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” a bygone color scheme, making each composed moment of grief, a flirtatious look, a creased smile, or the stillness of hands holding each other look like a grand oil painting, heavy with life and emotion. Even a montage of Black women’s faces at a wedding is like a close-up of all the emotions felt watching new love—all the hope and happiness held in their hearts is clear as the glowing look on their faces. 

In memory, there is the tender embrace of the familiar: a mother’s comfort, the pain of loss that will never be forgotten, the sensation of feeling at home listening to Spanish moss rustling in the trees or running your hand through the river where you used to fish with your father. The layout of “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” is a meandering trip down memory lane, more heartfelt than logical. Though narrative details are sometimes suggestive, Jackson finds innovative ways to visualize simple details, focusing on how gently a mom bathes her child, how carefully sisters hold onto each other in times of crisis, and every moment in between. As you follow Mack’s experiences growing up in Mississippi, you feel every painstaking detail, the camera accentuating every texture. “Slow. Take your time.” After all, isn’t there always beauty in our daily lives? 

Now playing in theaters. 

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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‘Saltburn’ Review: A Promising Young Man Takes a Seedy Turn

In the new film from Emerald Fennell, Barry Keoghan plays an Oxford student drawn into a world of lust and envy at a classmate’s estate.

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By Wesley Morris

“Saltburn” is the sort of embarrassment you’ll put up with for 75 minutes. But not for 127. It’s too desperate, too confused, too pleased with its petty shocks to rile anything you’d recognize as genuine excitement. This thing was written and directed by Emerald Fennell , whose previous movie was “ Promising Young Woman ,” a horror flick about rape that was also a revenge comedy. So believe me: She wants you riled. Fennell’s seen the erotic thrillers, studied her Hitchcock and possibly read her Patricia Highsmith, and gets that if you name your main character Oliver Quick he’s obligated to do something at least arguably Dickensian. The question here, amid all the lying, lazing about and (eventually, inevitably) dying, is to what end?

We’re dragged back to 2006, where two boys at Oxford — bookish Oliver (Barry Keoghan) and rakish Felix (Jacob Elordi) — forge one of those imbalanced, obsessive friendships that one of them mistakes for love and the other tolerates because he’s needier than he looks. It goes south or sideways or to outer space but also nowhere. Well, that’s not entirely accurate, since it also goes, for one summer, to Saltburn, Felix’s family’s estate, a grassy expanse that boasts a Baroque mansion with stratospheric ceilings, one cantilevered staircase, copious portraiture, a Bernard Palissy ceramic platter collection and one of those garden mazes where characters get lost right along with plots.

These two meet, in earnest, when Oliver loans Felix his bike, a moment Oliver’s been waiting for. The best scenes in the movie happen during this Oxford stretch when Oliver experiences Felix as an intoxicant, and Felix’s prepster coterie experiences Oliver as an irritant. There’s some crackle and dreaminess and post-adolescent instability here. Identities are being forged. It’s been better elsewhere — John Hughes, “Heathers,” Hogwarts, Elordi’s HBO show “Euphoria.” But Fennell squeezes some hunger, cruelty and passable tenderness onto these moments. When Oliver tells Felix his father’s just died, Felix extends his Saltburn invitation out of sincere compassion.

Now, what happens over the course of this visit amounts to a different movie — or maybe three. Lust and envy take over. As does Fennell’s tedious, crude stab at psychopathology. Felix hails from one of those stiff, pathologically blasé clans where “clenched” counts as an emotion. Everybody at Saltburn seems ready for a new toy. And Oliver’s A-student impulses make a sport of ingratiation. His erudition, availability and blue eyes impress Felix’s droll mother, Elspeth (Rosamund Pike); his mere arrival arouses Felix’s self-conscious zombie of a sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver). In a different movie, their enthusiasm for this newcomer would make you sad for Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), a schoolmate and cousin of Felix who’s already on the premises, flatulent with attitude by the time Oliver shows up. He’s the one nonwhite major character in “Saltburn,” a fact the movie considers doing something intriguing with but abandons. His eyebrows are just chronically Up to Something. Is Farleigh worried about losing a financial lifeline? Is he jealous that Oliver might consummate things with Felix before he does?

But this isn’t a movie in which anybody’s reaction to new developments is straightforward — and not because there’s anything complex or psychological going on with the screenwriting or the performances (Richard E. Grant pumps Felix’s father full of drollery). It’s because Fennell is more drawn to — or maybe just better at — styling and stunts than she is the tougher work of emotional trenchancy. If she gives us one music-video bit (a montage, a whole tracking shot), she must give us half a dozen. When the time comes for the movie to make its switch to gothic mischief, it’s like watching the first half of “Psycho” turn into the video for “When Doves Cry” or George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90.” What’s that look like? Well: Oliver sneaks a peek as Felix masturbates in a tub, and once the coast is clear he bends over and sips the draining bathwater. It’s a fine shot that’s also an absurd thing to have this guy do. Which is how you know the movie is failing as a good work of trash. I didn’t laugh or gape. I just sat there watching an actor do his damnedest to save the rest of the movie before it heads down the drain. Fennell keeps going, though, turning her mild protagonist into someone ripe for the cover of a bodice-ripper: a crafty virgin discovers the lethal weapon of lust.

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Metacritic reviews

• 90 The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt Salt moves ever forward -- pushing, pushing, pushing its heroine to greater feats every minute. It doesn't stop for martinis, either shaken or stirred, or any other detours. The movie is lean and muscular, looking for action even in situations where a little sleight of hand might have done the trick.
• 80 New York Daily News Joe Neumaier New York Daily News Joe Neumaier Fast-moving, exciting and contains more twists than a tunnel under Checkpoint Charlie.
• 80 Boxoffice Magazine Pete Hammond Boxoffice Magazine Pete Hammond In a crackerjack and very lean 100 minutes, the lithe and physically dynamic Jolie burns up the screen and shows the boys how it's done.
• 75 Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Salt knows how to stay one step ahead of you in devious, if jaw-droppingly contrived, ways. The movie is fun, dammit. So who cares, really, if it's trash?
• 70 Variety Justin Chang Variety Justin Chang As a fierce superspy and mistress of many disguises, Jolie represents the one indisputably kickass element in this brisk, professionally assembled but finally shrug-inducing thriller.
• 70 Village Voice Village Voice From the start, this character plays to the star's strengths, merging subject and object, warrior and victim, ass-kicker and damsel-in-distress. And hero and villain.
• 50 Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz Suffice it to say that it's something that would make Austin Powers blush, baby, but it's not supposed to be funny.
• 50 Tampa Bay Times Steve Persall Tampa Bay Times Steve Persall Salt is a movie constantly painting itself into corners then tromping out with arbitrary twists and action distractions.
• 40 Time Out Keith Uhlich Time Out Keith Uhlich Jolie must eventually become a comic-book supergirl impervious to explosions and bullets, all the better to set up a "Bourne"-like franchise by the final fade-out.
• 25 Observer Rex Reed Observer Rex Reed Salt is about as believable as a secret training program for military pilots consisting entirely of kangaroos in flight helmets. But it must be said that the star carries her load admirably.
• See all 42 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Salt

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Salt Reviews

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Screen Rant

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Phillip Noyce

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Angelina Jolie

Liev schreiber, daniel olbrychski, august diehl, chiwetel ejiofor, seasons (4).

Season 1 (2016)

Season 2 (2018), season 3 (2022), season 4 (2026), screenrant reviews, salt review.

Salt is a decent spy-thriller that once again proves Angelina Jolie can out-punch, kick, and shoot just about any male action star out there.

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THEATRICAL CUT

1 hr 40 min, behind-the-scenes, rotten tomatoes® score.

I'm not saying that the movie is the best thing ever made for women... But I'll accept that, as a step toward evening the field for women in Hollywood.

Salt is to action movies what the Twilight trilogy and its sexual, anti-hemoglobin puritanism is to vampire stories. This ideological vehicle also has... a trite and well-known story, but narrated with solvency and agility. [Full review in Spanish]

Spending 100 minutes with some well-constructed action will be enough for some viewers. But when the apparent potential for a clever spy thriller is passed up for a simple adrenaline rush, the result is a disappointment.

There is little reasoning but lots of entertainment. [Full review in Spanish]

With this role Jolie continues to carve out and define the image of the female action star, infusing Salt with equal parts bravado and vulnerability.

Have your summer blockbusters been lacking a little punch? If so, sprinkle them with Salt.

Noyce cleverly keeps us guessing, but we know that just as the protagonist' truth is built upon lies, so too is the film's heart - exciting, yet empty and full of glaring holes.

Director Phillip Noyce... keeps things moving with an engaging lead, well-timed action sequences, smart dialogue and characters whose motivations are well defined.

The filmmakers determine to double-cross, triple-cross, and quadruple-cross both Salt and the audience to the point that few will be able to root for the title character.

It's a far cry from Jolie's best.

Additional Info

• Genre : Action, Thriller
• Release Date : July 23, 2010
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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