(Courtesy of Sony Pictures )

Well ladies and gentlemen; if the CIA, FBI and Secret Service are as incompetent as those portrayed in “Salt,” we may all be in some real danger. They continuously allow Jolie, who plays rogue CIA agent Evelyn Salt, to slip from their grasp on no less than 10 occasions, all more unbelievable than the next.

And, maybe it’s this sheer lack of believability that just sealed the deal on this being one of the most ridiculous movies of the summer. I may not be a CIA agent, but even I could tell that some of these feats were remarkably improbable.

In my favorite less-than-realistic escape, Jolie has been handcuffed and stuck in the back of a police SUV that is being followed by about 40 federal officers. All while in motion, she takes down all four police officers in the vehicle and then uses one of their stun-guns to force the driver to push the pedal down while she drives. She subsequently maneuvers the vehicle over the railing of a bridge, crashes the car into a bus below, and slips out of both the car and her handcuffs completely unnoticed and without a scratch and simply strolls away. Where were those forty other police officers following her? No clue. How did she survive the crash landing of the vehicle without some serious whip lash? Again, no clue.

A close second comes when she jumps out of a helicopter over an icy Potomac River from at least 100 feet up, swims out of the river, and then limps away. No broken bones, no breathless gasps for air as though she had gotten the wind knocked out of her during her daring splash, nothing. Both of the aforementioned stunts triggered a bit of laughter from the audience gathered for the prescreening.

Laughter aside, I think all of these miraculous getaways could probably be excused as movie magic if the movie itself wasn’t a complete dud. The problem with the movie is that you simply do not care about any of the characters. Because Jolie’s character is a secret agent, the filmmakers do not develop her personality at all. Because of this lack of character development, you just don’t sympathize with her enough to exert effort caring about her well-being. This prevents the “hold-your-breath-grab-your-date’s-hand” excitement that is needed for these action-packed adventures. The only character you really do care about is her husband, who might be in the movie for a total of 10 minutes.

I would excuse the lack of character development if this was a pattern for all spy movies, but it simply isn’t. You care about what happens to Jason Bourn, James Bond, and Ethan Hunt; you even care about what happens to all of Charlie’s Angles, but not Evelyn Salt.

Jolie is also completely unbelievable as an action hero in this movie. She has clearly lost a lot of weight. So much so that I sort of feel like if I were to quickly take her from behind I could snap her in half. So, seeing this skeletal being rough up on a bunch of burly secret agents is pretty mind-boggling, and it makes all of those impossible physical feats I mentioned above all that much more unbelievable.

All that being said, there were a few moments of real cinematic thrill packed into the movie. It was a decently entertaining story, so if you are ok with mindlessly watching a movie for the purpose of pure escapism, this might be a promising flick. The action scenes are shot well, even if they aren’t actually believable, so again, if you can ignore the utter improbability of what’s happening on screen you might have a pretty good time with “Salt.” And while Angelina Jolie is less than satisfying, her CIA counterpart played by Liev Schreiber is pretty convincing as are many of the other major characters in the movie.

Additionally, the plot line is really fascinating. It’s also incredibly timely considering the real-life Russian spy ring that was just shipped back to Mother Russia after several years of unsuccessfully trying to infiltrate low level intelligence sources.

Being an action junkie who owns every spy movie that has been made in the last eight years, I find myself rather underwhelmed by this movie. I would still recommend that you see it, but if you’re worried about your summer funds running low I would wait until this one hits the dollar theater or even goes to DVD, and instead spend your money on proven summer hits like “Inception” or “Toy Story 3.”