Angelina Jolie, Liev Shreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, August Diehl
Salt could well be this year s top summer movie. It s pacy, smart, subversive and knocked out with such verve and attack that you re not in the least bit bothered by how far-fetched it all is.
Angelina Jolie plays the famously gender-bendered role originally earmarked for Tom Cruise. She s CIA s special agent Evelyn Salt, who one day accompanies her hardbitten colleagues Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) on a difficult job debriefing a Russian defector who says he s got very important information. The CIA has apparently a Russian mole in its ranks: a "sleeper" agent ready to carry out an atrocious act, and this is Evelyn herself! Horrified, Salt has to go on the run, because no one believes in her innocence – battling both baddies and goodies to clear her name and foil an assassination plot...
Directed by Phillip Noyce who made "The Quiet American", "Rabbit-Proof Fence" and "Patriot Games", Kurt Wimmer s script channels the spirit of The Manchurian Candidate, perhaps via the Jonathan Demme remake. Evelyn Salt is not merely a super-fit martial-arts ninja but a mistress of disguise: hilariously, she even at one point passes herself off as a man – a lean, wiry, smallish guy with a toothy smile and mop of hair. Short of carrying around the complete works of L Ron Hubbard, the homage couldn t be made clearer. Very entertaining stuff. The Guardian
