Salt is a 2010 American action thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Kurt Wimmer, and starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Jolie plays CIA operative Evelyn Salt, who is accused of being a Russian sleeper agent and goes on the run to try to clear her name.

Originally written with a male protagonist, with Tom Cruise initially secured for the lead, the script was ultimately rewritten by Brian Helgeland for Jolie.

Two years later, Salt interrogates Russian defector Oleg Vasilyevich Orlov, with CIA colleague Ted Winter and counterintelligence officer Darryl Peabody observing.

Salt kills Orlov and the other agents and leaves to meet with the KA Shnaider in his cover as a Czech - NATO liaison officer.

Alone with Peabody in a helicopter, Salt explains her actions to him, promising to hunt down the remaining KA agents if freed, pointing out that Matveyev is alive and that she had not shot him earlier.

[7] The plot incorporated many elements from Equilibrium, with an oppressive and paranoid political system of brainwashing that gets overthrown by one of its high-ranking members, who rebels due to an emotional transformation.

[13] Noyce was attracted to Salt for its espionage themes, which are present in most of his filmography,[14] as well as the tension of a character who tries to prove his innocence, yet also does what he was previously accused of.

Wimmer, Noyce, and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura went to visit Jolie at her home in France to discuss a possible script and character change.

[16] One of Jolie's requests was to rework the third act, which originally had Salt rescue his wife and son from a coalition of villains because she did not believe a mother would neglect her child in this kind of situation.

[16][18] On February 19, 2009, Liev Schreiber was reported to play the role of Ted Winter, Evelyn Salt's friend and colleague in the CIA.

[17] The opening sequence in North Korea was shot at the Floyd Bennett Field, with an extra who had experience with prisoner exchanges acting as a consultant.

Salt's rendezvous with Orlov was shot on the Frying Pan, a former lighthouse ship, now moored in the Hudson River, at 26th Street in New York.

The outside of the KA training facility was the Makaryev Monastery in Russia,[15] while the interior was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection in New York's East Village, where the funeral was also shot.

[30] Salt's fighting style was described as a mixture of Muay Thai, Shaolin Kung-Fu, and Jeet Kune Do, which was considered by the stunt team the most suitable for Jolie's physique, and Krav Maga, for its rawness and aggressiveness.

Noyce wanted to film the scene where Salt hangs from the edge of the building in a studio with chroma key, but Jolie insisted on doing it herself in the actual location.

[31] Salt's escape after being captured in St. Bartholomew's originally involved her jumping off a building into a window-cleaning machine, but budgetary constraints caused the scene to be changed into a car chase.

For the scene where Salt disguises herself as a major, pictures of Angelina Jolie were treated on Adobe Photoshop to create a believable male version, with the resulting image being used by the make-up team as an inspiration for the prosthetics.

[34] Director Phillip Noyce has said that, due to the extensive usage of flashbacks, "there was always going to be a mountain of alternative material that would not fit into the theatrical version".

[38] The song "Orlov's Story" includes a Russian lullaby that music editor Joe E. Rand found at Amoeba Music, and which served as inspiration for the choir heard in other tracks – but the chants in the rest of the score are only random syllables, as Rand and Howard thought actual Russian words would be a spoil about Salt's allegiance.

[39] The film's marketing campaign included a panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 22, 2010,[40] and an episodic advergame titled "Day X Exists", where players watched webisodes and performed missions to unveil the terrorist plot.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Angelina Jolie gives it her all in the title role, and her seasoned performance is almost enough to save Salt from its predictable and ludicrous plot.

[62] Justin Chang of Variety said Jolie was "in her element, submitting gamely to the mayhem and hitting crucial emotional notes with effective understatement", and called the film a "brisk, professionally assembled, but finally shrug-inducing thriller.

"[56] Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars (his maximum), saying "Salt is a damn fine thriller.

"[63] Time magazine reviewer Richard Corliss praised the action scenes and Noyce's persistence in keeping a serious tone – "he ignores the story's preposterous elements and lets the audience decide whether to laugh, shudder, or both".

[61] Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer described the film as absurd, overplotted, and incoherent, and said the villainous schemes "would have been called off 20 years ago at the latest when the Soviet Union dissolved".

[65] Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer described Salt as "commendably swift and progressively inane", saying the script was a "sloppy concoction of story elements from '70s espionage classics" that ended up not working right with its "nonsensical setups and wildly illogical twists".

[66] James Berardinelli of Reelviews considered that, while the film was fast-paced and the action scenes competently shot, the plot was predictable and "the spy aspects, which are, by far, the most intriguing elements of the movie, are shunted aside in favor of spectacular stunts and long chases".

[67] Salt received one Academy Award nomination, for Best Sound Mixing (Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin), which it lost to Inception.

[79] On December 10, 2012, Sony Pictures announced hiring screenwriter Becky Johnston[80][81] (known for The Prince of Tides, Seven Years in Tibet, and Arthur Newman),[82] as well as producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash.