If we were in some strange me-niverse where my reaction to a movie were all that mattered, nothing new would have released this week.

See, I saw Inception last week. They could follow that up with The Departed 2: Citizen-Emperor Kane Strikes Back (Using Hobbits and Aliens) and I would be like "Well, I liked the part where Bill Murray woke up every day to crash-land on a desert planet only to be seduced by Anne Bancroft and terrorized by hideous albino cave people, and it was pretty sweet when the Dude blew them all up with that nuclear bowling ball, but I still can't give this thing my full recommendation."

-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.

But exactly like pro athletes, except without the money, respect, or ability to stay away from awful puns (English majors will recognize this as foreshadowing, then return to their cardboard boxes), critics must have short memories. Yeah, I saw a great, great film last weekend, but that was last weekend. Now it's back to the Salt mines.

When Russian defector Daniel Olbrychski comes to the CIA with intel, Angelina Jolie's assigned to the case. He tells her of a plot to assassinate the Russian president on U.S. soil — and that she will be the assassin.

Concerned for her husband (it's common knowledge in these circles that when an agent is outed, rightly or wrongly, their family's at immediate risk), Jolie lights out, escaping from the CIA's interrogators. Soon, she finds herself entangled in a decades-old Soviet conspiracy to take down the whole United States.

Which is a vague way of saying that tons of kooky business ensues, but Salt goes to such great lengths to obscure what's happening and Jolie's specific role in this kookiness that I must remain equally elusive. I extend this courtesy despite the fact Salt rudely insists we sit through 30 straight minutes of car chases and Tomb Raider-delivered beatdowns before it begins to clue us in to what's going on.

It's awfully hard to care about Jolie's plight when we don't know what side she's on or if the threat is even real. I worried for her character the same way I worry about world hunger or that bag of peas in my fridge that was once frozen but is now leaking brown sludge all over the crisper: a moment of great concern followed by a swift but painless drop into apathy, with the occasional flash of "Why isn't someone doing something about this? Whatever."

Honestly, I don't like being manipulated by a movie. Check that — I don't like being manipulated in a way that whacks me in the face. Salt keeps us in suspense by withholding information, then carefully doles out flashbacks when we need a prod toward comprehension.

Even once it gets around to clueing us in, it's a paradox of the tremendously outlandish and hugely predictable. Granted, predictability is an overrated flaw. I can predict that when I pop my shirt off, the crowd is going to faint with delight, and that doesn't make the spectacle any less awesome. But director Phillip Noyce's attempts to mislead us end up as transparent as his early efforts to conceal things from us.

Still, his action scenes are competent enough, and Jolie's a pretty decent actor. This keeps Salt afloat just long enough for it to plow full steam into the Ocean of Crazydom.

As the plot grows wilder and wilder, expanding the stakes from Jolie's freedom to the life of the Russian president to the continued existence of the United States itself, the fun blows up with it. I wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out everyone was actually an alien agent with plans to grind up all humanity into space-dog food.

Salt is too slick and a little too skilled to classify as "so bad it's good." File it under "keep your brain in your pocket and don't worry if you miss the first half."

Grade: C+