"Salt," the One Woman Army

Angelina Jolie is one of the few female action stars we have left. She's one of the few action stars we have period, as action films have shifted focus over the years from the stars to the CGI effects and brand-name superheroes. And Jolie proves exactly why she's still worth her paycheck in "Salt," the new spy-game thriller where she plays CIA agent Evelyn Salt, a woman who could hold her own against Jason Bourne and James Bond.

Evelyn Salt is an intriguing character not because of who she is or what she does, but because of the tightrope of audience expectation she has to navigate in order to be successful. On the one hand, she has to pull off incredible physical feats like parkour-style leaps from one moving vehicle to another, sliding down elevator shafts without a stitch of protective gear, and outgunning dozens of law enforcement officers through multiple chase scenes. And yet, she has to retain some amount of believability as a real-world human being, in order to sell the plot, a series of predictable misdirections and double-crosses by deadly double-agents. Jolie has to keep viewers guessing about Salt's loyalties, while also using very limited narrative space to keep her emotionally available. I doubt it's as easy as she makes it look.

We're first introduced to our heroine being interrogated in a prison cell by North Koreans, where she insists repeatedly that she is not a spy. Due to the efforts of her boyfriend Michael (August Diehl), she's released as part of a prisoner swap. Two years later, they're happily married with a dog and a cozy apartment. Evelyn Salt was a spy, of course, and still is a spy, working for the CIA in the guise of a vice president of an energy company. All seems well until a Russian defector named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) identifies her as a covert agent who is going to assassinate the visiting Russian president. Salt's closest colleague and friend, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), tries to defend her, but another agent, Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is more skeptical and antagonistic. As for Salt, her first instinct is to find Michael and ensure his safety, knowing what happens to the spouses of exposed CIA agents. When they try to detain her, she runs.

Over the next hour and a half, the action doesn't stop. It pauses occasionally for a quick flashback or tidbit of exposition, but otherwise chases, escapes, and infiltrations keep coming in quick succession and they're a lot of fun. Director Philip Noyce delivers straightforward, coherent set-pieces without a lot of quick cuts or distracting editing, while maintaining the shell game of his heroine's intentions. By design, Evelyn Salt is meant to be a morally ambiguous character, but anyone familiar with spy stories should be able to work out most of the story's twists and turns from the trailers. What Angelina Jolie brings to the role is a strong physicality that sells Salt as a credible threat to her enemies. Many of her stunts are impossible or would surely result in grievous injuries, but Jolie makes them seem just plausible enough that it's not so hard for the audience to turn off the rational parts of their brains and just enjoy the adrenaline rush.

Originally Evelyn Salt was Edwin Salt, and the role was envisioned for Tom Cruise, which goes a long way toward explaining why the film has more impact than it otherwise might have if it were conceived for Jolie from the outset. You get the sense that very little of the script was changed aside from switching out a few pronouns, so though Salt is jokingly referred to as a "Mata Hari" early in the film, there are none of the stereotypes that are associated with women in espionage roles. Jolie's sexual appeal is obvious, but she does not rely on seduction as a tactic except for one brief instance that isn't very overt. In fact, she's actually chided for getting married by a superior, because a husband is viewed as a "distraction." She also dons a variety of disguises from scene to scene, but nothing revealing or form-fitting. It's a nice inversion of her skin-baring assassin character, Fox, from 2008's wretched "Wanted," who was almost purely eye candy incarnate.

Despite eschewing the more over-the-top genre conventions, "Salt" ultimately has little depth to it. The broadly drawn Russian villains are woefully out of date, the secret conspiracy's grandiose aims are remarkably implausible, and you might wonder why Salt's husband has so little to do until you realize, of course, his part was originally meant for a female lead. This is an action film that requires roughly the same amount of suspension of disbelief as the "James Bond" series, though its visuals are closer to those of "The Bourne Identity." Aside from Salt, who has little development as it is, the characters are all one-dimensional, and defined almost solely by what the script needs them to do at a particular point in time. We do get serviceable performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Liev Schreiber, both dependable character actors, who get about one good scene apiece. But this is Angelina Jolie's show, and how much a viewer likes the film will depend entirely on how much they like her as Evelyn Salt.

Fortunately Jolie is engaging, easy to sympathize with, and fun to watch. I can see "Salt" generating a couple of sequels - the ending shamelessly sets one up - to keep her at the top of the box office for a long time to come. I just wish Hollywood had more decent lead roles for women like this so we could develop a few more actresses of Jolie's caliber into credible action stars. Despite its flaws, "Salt" is easily the best of the meager genre of one-woman-army films, among a sea of similar pictures starring men. I hope we'll get more like it.