In brief, Columbia Pictures has worked hard to establish a female equivalent to the “Bourne” franchise. (The end of the movie all but sells popcorn for a sequel.) The formula is similar: Jolie’s character, Evelyn Salt, is an insider (a C.I.A. agent) who is also a hunted outsider (a possible Russian mole and assassin). Salt is always on the move—she dashes through the bowels of buildings she has never entered before and escapes innumerable encounters with fully armed security agents, who obligingly present tender parts of their bodies for her to attack. Heroic inexorability is, of course, a movie staple, going back to the silent serials, and there’s no reason that women shouldn’t be super-studs, too.
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Salt opens. Why, oh, why? Jut wait for the sequel.
Why do we need sequels? Stand-alone movies can be good, too.
