Angelina Jolie is Bourne and Bond times ten in the most ludicrous and nonsensical film of the summer. Director Phillip Noyce and writer Kurt Wimmer, usually proven commodities, dial in a stinker here. Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent living in married bliss after a stint in a North Korean prison. Her happy world goes south when a Russian defector fingers her as a deep cover assassin...drumroll please...placed here as a child to kill the Russian president. Soon Salt is on the run from her CIA cohorts (Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor), as they try to figure out who's side she's on.

First let me state that is an extremely pedantic film. Anyone with half a brain can see the plot coming within ten minutes. Then you are forced to wait while the US government, dumbasses extraordinaire in Salt's universe, bumbles their way to the painfully obvious conclusion. The plot is far-fetched, which is fine, but it only works if everyone else involved is a complete moron. Seriously, Forrest Gump would have to be in charge to let Salt go this crazy. It's just so unbelievable. I literally laughed myself silly through several key parts of this film.

In 2002 Doug Liman and Matt Damon made The Bourne Identity, a film which seems to be the new bible for all spy films. Salt is an unabashed Bourne re-tread, except it sucks and Bourne doesn't. The car chases, fight scenes, it's a ringer. The one thing that differs is the scope of the plot. In Bourne's world, he's just a dude trying to figure out who he is. In Salt's world, she's doing the same, except the fate of the free world rests in her ample bosom. This is where they inserted the James Bond philosophy of we're saving the world one spy at a time.

Jolie is beautiful and athletic, she can pull off Salt. But she's played this gunslinging, fighting character before in two vastly superior films - Wanted and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Salt doesn't come close to her previous bad girl personas. It could have been though. There was the slight chance to extrapolate the back story more, but it's not pursued. What we get is action diarrhea as Salt pummels her brainless adversaries.

Salt is a woefully subpar effort from all involved. Wimmer's scripts sucks. Noyce's direction is awful. And Jolie is just making the rounds to another million dollar payday. How can the same actress from A Mighty Heart make such a silly film? Salt is a complete dud. I can't even recommend it for the action scenes.