"Oh, I believe in moles all right - but not the boogeyman!"Re-tooling Salt for a female lead gives the film a slightly different resonance - and a strong actor like Angelina Jolie certainly carries it off very well - but essentially it is a standard implausible cat-and-mouse thriller that just about gets by on the power of its star. Tom Cruise should not have been too worried; Salt is more Jack Ryan (a character the director has put on-screen twice) than Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourne, although there are inevitable echoes of both franchises as well. The plot is straightforward to the point of feeling thin and somewhat empty, but the third act 'twists' are very well played, even though by that point the narrative has literally no place else to go. The action is TV-grade, with the exception of one unexpectedly jaw-dropping stunt in the first big car chase. Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor provide solid acting support as expected, and James Newton Howard provides an efficient score. The film gets more interesting as it progresses, and it is never less than good entertainment, but it is hard to see where the clearly-signposted sequel could go.
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