REVIEW: Action thriller not worth its 'Salt'

I’m not ashamed to say I love these sorts of movies — espionage thrillers jammed to the gills with hairbreadth escapes, gladiatorial bouts and death-defying stunts. So it was disappointing when “Salt” turned out to be little more than a larger-budgeted episode of “24,” a double agent concept that started out successfully enough but quickly flew off the rails and smashed headlong into laughable implausibility.

Though “Salt” takes place in the present, it is a world slightly off from our own, where Cold War antagonisms still course near the surface and old enemies still prowl around in the shadows, looking for opportunities to strike.

Angelina Jolie is CIA officer Evelyn Salt, a decorated field officer who is accused of being a Russian mole and goes on the run to prove her innocence. Her fellow agents (Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor), initially convinced of her innocence, grow suspicious of her true motivations when she is placed at the scene of numerous assassination attempts on heads of state.

Director Phillip Noyce, who made a mainstream name for himself with the Tom Clancy thrillers “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger,” took some time off in 2002 to flex his artistic muscles, releasing two very good, very literate films in “Rabbit Proof Fence” and “The Quiet American.”

Now, after nearly a decade of general obscurity, Noyce has returned to the fare that made him famous — high-wire action-adventure. He’s lost none of his touch. If anything, he’s gotten better.

Too bad the material falls out from beneath him and takes his best efforts along with it. “Salt,” which opens believably if exaggeratedly, quickly becomes far-fetched, insanely improbable and embarrassingly contrived. For a film like “Salt” to work, a series of events would have to take place with such exquisite timing and exacting precision that it could only occur in the land of make-believe.

Jolie holds her own, believably beating half the characters in the film to a bloody pulp and using the rest as bullet sponges.

“Bourne” comparisons are inevitable (even James Newton Howard’s score seems designed to mimic John Powell’s music from the Matt Damon spy trilogy) and not wholly without merit.

“Salt,” ridiculous as it is, is still undeniably exciting. Once it starts, it doesn’t stop. The film is, essentially, one long chase sequence. There are some tremendous, lengthy stunt sequences, including hopscotching from semi to semi on a freeway and crashing police SUVs off Manhattan bridges. That there is blessedly little CGI present is all the more impressive.

But Jolie’s impressive physicality and pulse-racing action scenes cannot rescue the film from what is, ultimately, such a stunt-heavy narrative that there’s no room or time for things like real plot, real people or real emotion. Regardless, the film is designed as a vanguard for an inevitable sequel.

My advice — stick around for the first half of the film, and when it jumps the shark, slip out and go see “Inception” again.

Salt

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Director: Phillip Noyce

Theaters: Hollywood, Tinseltown, Carmike, Chapel Hills, Cinemark

Rated: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action)

Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

GRADE: C+