SALT (12A).

Action/Thriller. Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl and Andre Braugher. Director: Phillip Noyce.

Angelina Jolie’s first film for two years takes itself far too seriously. Salt, named after the CIA operative played by Jolie, is a thinly-veiled attempt at making a Bourne-esque franchise, but rather than be genuinely gripping, the plot starts slow, is predictable and the script clichéd.

%movie(4685) The action opens ‘two years ago’ in North Korea, where we find an unfeasibly blonde Jolie stripped to her underwear, bound and covered in blood.

She’s released with the help of her German arachnologist boyfriend (Diehl) and we flash forward to their spider-strewn apartment, on their wedding anniversary.

At CIA HQ in Washington, Evelyn Salt is set to leave for the day, when she and her boss Winter (Schreiber) are called to interrogate Russian defector Orlov (Olbrychski) who accuses Salt of being part of a cell of highly-trained Russian sleeper spies who are about to be activated in what he terms ‘Day X’.

Salt, he claims, will kill the Russian President at the American vice-president’s funeral in New York. Realising her husband’s in danger, Salt tells Winter, “I’m not a goddamn Russian spy”, before blasting her way out of the building and jumping from truck to truck in a car chase.

Cue cheesy flashbacks of Evelyn meeting her husband for the first time in a hot-house, as she finds he’s not at home and kits herself up to head to New York.

While crowds mass round a church before the vice-president’s funeral, Salt evades her CIA colleagues and slips into the subway and the church vault to carry out the assassination of the Russian president. But is she really a sleeper spy?

The film, which seems timely, given the recent Russian spy furore in the States, was originally written for a male lead. In a nod to that, Salt disguises herself as a man at one stage, to break into the White House, but the scene lacks humour.

Jolie can still kick some serious butt – there’s a huge body count in the film – but too often it seems she’s just going through the motions and some of the high-octane moments lack spark.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is on form as the counter-intelligence officer who chases Salt throughout the film, and is integral to the final scene that sets up a sequel. If there are tongue-in-cheek moments, they don’t raise a laugh and the dull colour palette does nothing to lift the film out of the realms of mediocrity.