Salt

There's a fresh spy-fi franchise to welcome to the ranks of Bond and Bourne. Hotel-keeping's three golden rules may be "location, location, and location"; spy-fi-making's trio are more complex: plot, plot, plot. Without them, top-rated stars, directors and editors (and photogenic locations) are wasted. Salt made a good start with a screenplay that was almost too cleverly plotted.

It also had an ideal star lead in Angelina Jolie, seeming to revel in her best action-adventure role since Lara Croft. The director, Australian Phillip Noyce, had an ideal track record too (the Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford Jack Ryan thrillers) and he'd directed Jolie happily before (The Bone Collector). One film editor was a double Oscar nominee (Briton Stuart Baird) whose recent work included Casino Royale; the other skilled editor, John Gilroy, had earned high marks for Michael Clayton. The producers then signed up an Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood) and commissioned original music from another veteran multi-award-winning talent, James Newton Howard. Another golden rule had been obeyed: splurge on top behind-the-scenes professionals.

Writer Kurt Wimmer's recent credits for original and adapted screenplays include Street Killers, Equilibrium and Law Abiding Citizen. In Salt, he amalgamated many spy-fi themes, doing so at a frantic pace that precludes audiences from having time to recognise plot devices from Missions Impossible, North Korean settings, and action-thrillers featuring murdered loves, moles, triple agents, high-speed auto chases, full-facial masks and vengeful secret agent societies. It was no surprise to learn that Salt was originally designed for Tom Cruise, and that yet another veteran talent, Brian Helgeland, was employed to adjust the screenplay for Jolie.

At the end of the movie, the extent of the movie's trickery becomes clear. Could one really have even half-believed that Jolie would be able single-handedly to out-trick and out-kick cohorts of FBI, CIA and modern KGB agents, set out to assassinate two presidents, withstand water-boarding, be a mistress of all martial arts and have a Russian father-figure, a spider-loving German husband and a cute dog? Yes, Salt is a successful live-action animated movie.

Ever-reliable supporting actors completed its winning package: Liev Schreiber as the Washington ally, and Nigerian-Briton Chiwetel Ejiofor as the secret agent primed to be Jolie's partner-in-justice in a well-deserved sequel.