I completely forgot that the missus and I watched Salt the weekend before our daughter was born. I could have easily done it for last week’s Friday Fisticuffs instead of clunkily combining it with an 80s Odyssey. Ah well. I guess it’s not the best sign for the movie or this review that I forgot about it after watching it less than a week prior.

Well, I remember a few things. Basically Angelina Jolie plays the titular character who is a spy. She’s going to meet her husband one day when some Russian spy comes in to defect and drops a bomb: there’s a sleeper agent in their midst named Salt. Her former bosses try to interview her to see what’s happening, but the defector breaks away, which allows her to escape as well. From there it’s a race to see who can prove which side they’re on. The real meat of Salt, comes from the fact that you never really know which side she’s on. Is she really a sleeper agent? There are times when it seems like that’s the case and she certainly has some shady behavior.

I had two problems with the movie stemming from plot holes. First off, we don’t see how Salt gets out of the interrogation room she was stuck in when the defector breaks away. (I’m also not super sure how he gets out of a freaking government building filled with agents, but that’s a matter for another day.) I would assume the scenes of Salt escaping were cut for time because we get a lengthy view of the rest of her escape. The other plot hole is minor but still bugged me. Salt escapes wearing just her regular clothes and yet can somehow pay for the cab ride home. While the first one is kind of big, the second one is minor, but you really don’t want to be asking “Hey how did she do that?” so early in a movie (we’re talking first 15-20 minutes here for the most part).

Aside from that, though, the action was pretty solid and straight out of the Bourne Trilogy if that’s your thing. Plus, I like how they handled Salt’s possible double or triple agent status and even the big reveal in the end, because, I wasn’t thinking too hard about it and it sailed over my head until the reveal. Anyway, it’s not the most original of movies, but it’s a good little actioner and I’m always a fan of seeing females in these kinds of roles that usually go to men. I even enjoyed Jolie for the most part even though I find her real life escapades pretentious and generally douchey. It’s weird for me to write that about the girl from Hackers, a big favorite of mine, and freaking Lara Croft, but thems the breaks. She doesn’t seem like the sequel type anymore, but who knows, a Salt follow up could have her going after the other sleeper agents and stumble onto some fresh new crazy plot of international intrigue. I won’t be waiting inline at the theater to see it, but I’ll definitely give it a rental watch.