Bourne had better watch his back. Cunning, cagey and cutthroat, Salt is the most satisfying spy thriller I've seen since amnesiac agent Matt Damon mothballed his license to forget.
As smoothly structured as such genre cornerstones as Three Days of the Condor -- but hard-wired into our feverishly paranoid present-day -- it's a showcase not just for a superb Angelina Jolie, but the diabolical skills of director Phillip Noyce.
Stripping away the usual big-budget bloat, Noyce is back -- way back -- in Dead Calm mode. Is it a coincidence both that 1989 Nicole Kidman-led nail-shredder and Salt concern women conspiring to survive while alpha males clash over her fate? Whether it is or not, the gender retrofitting that morphed Salt from a Tom Cruise production to a Jolie vehicle proves the film's luckiest stroke.
After all, how many times have we seen Cruise or Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis evade pursuers or, when the need arises, disable them? The sex change makes what transpires feel fresh -- and unpredictable.
Furthermore, Jolie is uncannily suited for a role in which our perception of her is constantly in doubt. She manages to telegraph a lot, without ever giving away too much. She's war-hardened without being invulnerable, emotional without seeming brittle. Hollywood has struggled for decades to convince moviegoers of both genders that an actress can carry an action film without male back-up. And in Jolie they have the only female star working today who's inherently more fascinating in a knife fight than a pillow fight. Most impressively is that she exudes sex appeal through formidability alone. At no point in Salt does she cavort as clandestine cheesecake (an impulse others ranging from Halle Berry to Jennifer Garner have surrendered to).
The set-up is simple: Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is a CIA operative accused of being a Soviet-era sleeper agent. Convinced her husband is in grave danger, she escapes CIA custody and is quickly Washington's most wanted. Thus the first third recalls 1993's terrific The Fugitive, with Jolie pursued by her colleague (Liev Schreiber) and a counter-intelligent specialist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) for an extended, exhaustive foot-and-car chase. From there, though, the corkscrew plot grows gratifyingly knottier.
Coupled with Inception, here are two intelligent, electrifying thrillers that have salvaged a season of remakes and rehashes. Inception is the more ambitious of the two, but Salt has its own strengths: speed, ferocity and guile. Even while the third act drifts into absurdity, Noyce never loses his grip of the narrative.
And all of this would be meaningless without Jolie. Always a sensational performer -- whether in Girl, Interrupted a decade ago or more recently in 2007's A Mighty Heart or 2008's Changeling -- she's the sinewy, sensual spine of this welcome late summer surprise.
