A competent, fast-paced thriller, Salt offers no surprises to the movie-goer, but is a fair watch nonetheless.

By PAULINE WONG

You know that movie that you wanted to watch? Yeah, well, it's sold out at the cinema. No more seats. That's right. Better luck next time.
But err, now what?

You've got a guy/girl you wanna' impress with a movie date and you've already spent half an hour looking for a parking spot. Hold on, that Jolie movie is on. So you buy two tickets, and you buy a Jumbo popcorn set, and you prepare to be mildly entertained.

Only problem is, you end up being wildly entertained, and all thoughts of a romantic movie date are forgotten as you watch Angeline Jolie jump, kick, punch, shoot, kill and perform impossible feats of awesomeness for the next 109 minutes.

Yes, even the girls will get a kick out of having a woman kick the rear ends of some of the toughest looking men you'd see on a cinema screen. Not just any woman, but a lean and mean Angelina Jolie. With a gun. Many guns, actually. With eyes that can kill a man just by looking at him. With cheekbones so sharp she could cut throats.

Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who is not at all who people think she is. When a Russian spy is brought in for investigation, he accuses her of being a 'sleeper' Russian spy - highly-trained assassins of Russian descent disguised as Americans - and he accuses her of being part of a plan to murder the Russian Prime Minister.

The assassination plot is apparently part of a greater plan: Day X, which is the day that America falls and Russia takes over.

It's all very super-spy stuff, but does Jolie break a sweat? No. She denies the accusations, escapes from CIA captivity to save her German arachnologist husband, who she fears will be put in danger as a result of her 'job'. She leaps off speeding vehicles, she dodges whizzing bullets, she dispatches CIA minions with the same ease she would have eating a plate of pancakes with her husband and she even takes time to make a bomb out of detergent, table legs (possibly from Ikea, it looks familiar and it detaches so easily!) and err, I forgot. But it exploded. Big time.

And that is pretty much all there is to Salt: Angelina Jolie. Because without her, it would have been a movie so ridiculous in its self-indulgent, predictable storyline that it would have tanked at the box office. Luckily, the very seasoned action chick Jolie has played too many tough-talking and ass-kicking roles to let herself down - she is the movie's only good thing.

That is why I won't spend any more words to talk about plot. It really is very predictable. You already know who the real baddie is from the first 20 minutes. Or at least you would have your suspicions.

So I would spend my final 100 words on telling you that if you go watch it, watch it for the fact that it is an action-packed movie with loads of flash and bang, and the ever-pouty lips of Angelina 'Mother of the Earth and of a Bazillion Adopted Children' Jolie. 

3 Stars