Salt

(M) Sony DVD/BD

This espionage thriller plays up to all of Angelina Jolie’s strengths as a bona fide female action hero.

She stars as Evelyn Salt, a federal agent who has been trained as a sleeper assassin, in a film that has all the twists and turns you would expect from the genre, plus a few you probably wouldn’t.

As Salt goes on the run, her efforts to prove her innocence further cast doubt on her motives — so goes the cat and mouse game of intrigue.

Gritty and intense, and left wide open for a sequel, this isn’t a tongue-in-cheek affair and the action scenes (most of which Jolie did herself) have the sort of physics-defying parameters which defy belief.

Adrian Drayton