MOVIE REVIEWS

Entertaining action-thriller with Angelina Jolie doing a great job again (following Mr. & Mrs. Smith) as an action heroine. The stunts are pretty well done (but don't compare with those in the Bourne series). This didn't do too bad at the box office (close to $300M worldwide, $110M budget) but no sequel despite this, at least the version I watched (Director's Cut), being left open-ended. **3.75/5**

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a CIA operative who having recently been repatriated in a Korean prisoner swap, is back behind a desk looking forward to going home to her arachnologist husband. On her way out of the door, she and her boss "Ted" (Liev Schreiber) are diverted to deal with an hitherto unknown Russian who in the course of his interrogation names her as a Russian spy. Now we hit "Bourne" meets "Lara Croft" mode as she is determined to get back to her husband and to prove she is not an enemy agent before Chitiwel Ejiofor ("Peabody") and his FBI buddies nail her slats to the mast. It's end to end action with lots of car chases, explosions, gun battles and the usual red herrings as she tries to hunt down the real bad guys. It is an action thriller, not a documentary - so don't expect Pulitzer standard writing nor for it to be especially plausible or to make much sense; it's just a good old take-over-the-world adventure movie with decent performances all round.