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100It's gloriously absurd. This movie has holes in it big enough to drive the whole movie through. The laws of physics seem to be suspended here the same way as in a Road Runner cartoon.
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90Salt moves ever forward -- pushing, pushing, pushing its heroine to greater feats every minute. It doesn't stop for martinis, either shaken or stirred, or any other detours. The movie is lean and muscular, looking for action even in situations where a little sleight of hand might have done the trick.
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85Like its star, Salt is a spare and lean piece of work; it's everything a modern action movie should be, a picture made with confidence but not arrogance, one that believes so wholeheartedly in its outlandish plot twists that they come to make perfect alt-universe sense.
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80Fast-moving, exciting and contains more twists than a tunnel under Checkpoint Charlie.
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80In a crackerjack and very lean 100 minutes, the lithe and physically dynamic Jolie burns up the screen and shows the boys how it's done.
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80This is a daring, audacious and sometimes terrifying movie -- purely as a thrill ride, it's probably the summer's best offering so far. That doesn't mean it left me feeling entirely satisfied. There's an emptiness at the soul of Salt -- again, meaning both the movie and the character -- that's extremely disturbing, maybe on purpose.
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80A senseless blast.
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80And really, who goes to summer action movies for cast-iron logic anyway? Or for plausible characters, for that matter? You go for brisk stunts expertly executed, for well-directed action that doesn't allow you to catch your breath and for one of the preeminent action stars of our time. Yes, that would be Angelina Jolie.
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80With a woman-with THIS woman-all the invincible-spy clichés feel fresh and fun again.
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80She's (Jolie) got what no other Hollywood woman even tries for, and which is embodied among recent international stars perhaps only by Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh: feminismo.
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75Primed to keep your pulse racing so your brain will stop thinking, "WTF!" Go with the illogic or you'll miss the fun.
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75Like the "Bourne" franchise to which Noyce's film is indebted, Salt is a combination of pursuit, evasion, name-clearing and a reversal or two.
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75In a way, Phillip Noyce's film is the anti-"Inception"; it's never dazzling, but it's never confusing, either. It's a Bourne movie minus the exotic locations and sickening handheld camera, and its head spy has way better lips than Matt Damon.
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75The action scenes are imaginative and elaborate without seeming fake. Nothing is belabored, and the stakes never stop escalating.
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75It's popcorn pulp that collided -- at 100 mph, natch -- with a far more sober and crafty grown-up movie.
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75Salt knows how to stay one step ahead of you in devious, if jaw-droppingly contrived, ways. The movie is fun, dammit. So who cares, really, if it's trash?
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75Salt's mechanical command of action is what makes it one of the most entertaining films of a summer thin on its once-abundant variety of cheap thrills.
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75The only thing missing from Salt is Lotte Lenya's Rosa Klebb with her steel blade-tipped shoes from "From Russia With Love." Come to think of it, the Russian defector here does indeed kill with steel-blade shoes. Nice touch.
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From the start, this character plays to the star's strengths, merging subject and object, warrior and victim, ass-kicker and damsel-in-distress. And hero and villain.
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70As a fierce superspy and mistress of many disguises, Jolie represents the one indisputably kickass element in this brisk, professionally assembled but finally shrug-inducing thriller.
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It is fun: Watching Ms. Jolie do her own acrobatics, under the direction of her longtime stunt coordinator Simon Crane, is a kick, especially in an era when our knowledge of special effects have so diluted the vicarious thrills of high-wire moviemaking.
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70The movie has an air of momentousness, yet most of it is conventional, though well-directed, pop mayhem.
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67It's nail-biting good fun, sporting some très haute couture nails.
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67Salt is hooey, but in a medium in which hooey is the stock-in-trade, it's effective hooey, and hooey with admirable craft, and, most of all, breezy hooey.
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63Salt offers a sloppy concoction of story elements from '70s espionage classics - the sinister black ops of "Three Days of the Condor," the nuclear dread of "Fail-Safe," the political-assassination scenarios of "The Day of the Jackal."
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63Salt is more than mere seasoning; it's a full bouillabaisse comprised of bits and pieces of James Bond, "The Manchurian Candidate," "The Bourne Identity," TV's "24," and the Nelson DeMille novel "The Charm School."
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63As Jolie's closest professional confidant, Liev Schreiber is his usual excellent, formidable self.
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63What Noyce and company don't seem to realize is that there's a huge difference between a superspy and a superhuman.
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63Salt goes down easy, but it's lacking both nourishment and flavor.
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60Enjoyable enough nonsense, even if it barely cracks a smile.
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50Salt contains many conflicts: intelligence vs. counterintelligence, blond Angelina vs raven-haired and . . . well, that's about it.
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50The considerable talents of a strong supporting cast, which includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Liev Schreiber and Andre Braugher, go untapped. The only distinguishing feature to this by-the-book thriller is Jolie, who gets pummeled as good as she pummels.
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50Jolie doesn't seem entirely bored with the routine. She has a laugh or two at her bionic image: Evelyn is a woman who uses a maxi pad as a bandage.
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50For all its action thrills, Salt is relatively humourless fare.
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50It's still a short-enough time-killer of a thriller -- not the worst of the summer, but a long way from the current state of the art.
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50Suffice it to say that it's something that would make Austin Powers blush, baby, but it's not supposed to be funny.
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50Salt is a movie constantly painting itself into corners then tromping out with arbitrary twists and action distractions.
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50She is the prime special effect, and a reminder that even in an era of technological overkill, movie stars matter.
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40Jolie must eventually become a comic-book supergirl impervious to explosions and bullets, all the better to set up a "Bourne"-like franchise by the final fade-out.
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40There's one nifty and original sequence--an assassination attempt during a state funeral where the pipe organs in the church all go haywire--but otherwise, this is crushingly generic.
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38Angelina Jolie is definitely worth her salt as an action hero, but Salt is never worth its Angelina Jolie.
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25Salt is about as believable as a secret training program for military pilots consisting entirely of kangaroos in flight helmets. But it must be said that the star carries her load admirably.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 98 out of 136
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Mixed: 17 out of 136
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Negative: 21 out of 136
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