3 Stars***

Angelina Jolie continues her consistent spell with action movies that really show character; (Wanted being the exception) you feel you really get to know Evelyn Salt in this fast paced chase movie.

What’s it all about?

A Russian spy walks into their offices and offers a vital piece of information: the President of Russia will be assassinated during his forthcoming visit to New York City to attend the funeral of the recently deceased U.S. Vice President. The name of the assassin: Evelyn Salt. Concerned about the safety of her husband, who she cannot contact, she goes on the run. Winter refuses to accept that she is a mole or a double agent but her actions begin to raise doubts.

Written by Kurt Wimmer and Brian Helgeland, the screenplay must have raced off the pages as it’s almost one continuous chase scene. It’s just the locations that move across the northern part of the US. The excellent twists add to the fun of this movie. You may guess one of them, but you certainly won’t guess all three (expert twist guessers who are disallowed.)

Of course we know that what the star actress does on screen is impossible to all but a few mere mortals on this earth. I mean, how many of us can easily jump from the tops of moving trucks to cars moving at high speed, land safely without a scratch to show for it apart from the bullet in the stomach. The slug doesn’t slow this girl down at all. It’s great the way she manages to move quicker than the speed of a bullet fired at her from close range by a secret service agent, who we would wish to believe has received fire arms training to quite a high level.

The music by James Newton Howard is also exceptionally dependable. Once you see this guy’s name you know what the music will be like. Strong thumping background music that’s good enough to stand alone, but not intrude so much into the movie that you miss the acting.

It’s a good 100 minutes worth the ticket price and proceeds from those tickets will easily outweigh the $100million budget. I’m sure by the time we get to DVD extras they’ll have seen why they paid the star so much money.

2 stars**

Ashton Kutcher is still better known as being Demi Moore’s young husband, but he’s working on it as we see more of him than her, on the big screen, these days.

Movies need their stars to surpass a certain chemistry, for their new found love to be believable. It could be that Mr Kutcher’s wife was on set during the making of this movie which would explain why there was a lack of chemistry, but Katherine Heigl starred opposite Gerard Butler in The Ugly Truth and that lacked more than just chemistry. Perhaps it’s just not meant to be and Ms Heigl needs to select better screenplays as sadly, she’s also responsible for Knocked Up. That’s a trio of movies that most would want to avoid from an actor’s acting point of view, but then the money must have been very good, which may be enough to sway the talent.

So what’s it all about?

Spencer Aimes (Kutcher) is just your average, undercover, government-hired super-assassin accustomed to a life of exotic European locales, flashy sports cars and even flashier women. But when he meets Jen Kornfeldt (Heigl), a beautiful, fun-loving computer tech recovering from a bad break-up, he finds true love…and happily trades international intrigue for domestic bliss, until Spencer and Jen are on the run for their lives.

The movie starts of as a mild laugh and then gets serious. It’s like being in two completely different movies, except that both only just do enough to keep the audience interested. The twists and turns are just plain tedious and are obviously meant to come across that way, but it only succeeds in the ticket payer thinking they’ve been had.

The silliness wouldn’t be lost in a Monty Python film, but here is just looks like a seven year old wrote the screenplay at times. Perhaps Blake Synder’s Save The Cat would be helpful here.

This movie had a good chance to be great but it missed out buy a long way. Perhaps they should get their chemistry set out again if they intend a follow up.

From her website:

Suzi Quatro will be releasing her touching and inspiring tribute to Elvis Presley on 11 January 2010.

8 January 2010 sees the 75th Anniversary of the birth of Elvis. To coincide with this Suzi Quatro is releasing her new single“Singing With Angels”,a tribute to the man that ‘changed her life’. From 11 January 2010 this will be avaliable worldwide on all major digital download stores including, iTunes, Napster, 7Digital, Rhaposdy, E-Music, HMV, Amazon, Tesco and many, many more.

This track features Elvis’ vocal backing band The Jordanaires & guitarist James Burton. The Track was recorded in Nashville and this breathtaking track can be purchased on Pre-Order from both iTunes and Ditto Music right now.

For those of you who thought Suzi Quatro is just a hard rock genius, she was ahead of herself with ‘Angel Flight’ way back in 1974; this video isn’t up to much unless you like the (not Suzi) lady’s dog, but the music shows you where she could have gone.

Don’t watch; listen!