This might be as silly as Salt, the previous film in which Angelina Jolie was cast as a smirking beauty with a mysterious identity, but it's not as entertaining, resembling more an inert knockoff of Charade than a recharging of The Bourne Identity. Jolie's Elise is partner-in-crime with the elusive Alexander Pierce, who has robbed a mob kingpin of a fortune. Her job is to mislead Pierce's pursuers, who include Scotland Yard (in the persons of Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton) as well as the requisite Russian goons, by hooking up with the first stranger she meets who resembles her criminal-mastermind paramour. That would be Frank (Johnny Depp), a nerdy tourist from Wisconsin who takes the bait and gets involved in a Venice adventure that's not in his guidebook. Jolie and Depp are no Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, and except for the opening surveillance sequence, you'd never guess that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck also directed the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others.
