Salt (2010) * * *

Directed by: Phillip Noyce

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schrieber

Salt is a thriller with lots of car chases, explosions, and shootings. Yet unlike The Bourne Identity, Supremacy, etc., these things don't come at you so fast and often that they actually begin to bore.  I actually cared, even when the motives of the title character were murky at best.  The plot in these types of movies border on ridiculous anyway.

The title character is CIA operative Evelyn Salt, played by Jolie with her usual amounts of smarts, physicality, and skin.   She is a married operative who is on her way home to her loving husband when a Russian defector (do they still have those now that the Soviet Union is kaput?) walks into CIA headquarters claiming that the Russian President will soon be assasinated by a sleeper Russian spy named... Evelyn Salt.

Salt, of course, maintains her innocence, but escapes capture by her superiors.   Part of the escape involves the ability to make explosives out of anything lying around, which these folks can usually do.   Is there a class in CIA training devoted strictly to this?   Must be.

Salt's escape leads to a chase ending up in New York and then Washington. I will go no further with the plot details because I have a heart and don't wish to spoil anything for you.   But what's more important is how much Jolie made me care despite all of the absurdities and jumps from one moving truck to another. Jolie is probably the most famous actress on Earth thanks to the tabloids, but the Oscar winner exudes intelligence and vulnerability even while she's killing ten agents at once.

The standard rules of shoot-em-up thrillers definitely apply here, which are, in no particular order:

1. The good guy kills the nameless pawns with one shot, while the pawns fire endless rounds at the good guy without one hit.

2. The hero can jump or fall from great heights (or even lesser heights) and not break or bruise anything.

3. The hero is always able to whip out a fake ID and credit card at will. Where does she get these? Wouldn't the CIA be able to track the usage especially if they supplied them?

4. Despite having never been in a certain boat, building, etc. before, the hero will always know how to escape and how to get around without running into a dead end.

Salt doesn't really come up with anything really new, although it is good to have Russian villains back after being pretty much phased out with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But what it does, it does well.   Sometimes that's enough.