Salt (2010 Film) - Plot

Plot

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is tortured in a North Korean prison on suspicion of being an American spy. She is released in a prisoner exchange to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) colleague Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), against their usual policy to sacrifice the individual. Winter points to arachnologist Michael Krause (August Diehl), whose persistence forced them to free her.

Two years later, on Salt and Mike's wedding anniversary, a Russian defector named Oleg Vasilyevich Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) walks in to Salt's CIA office. Salt interrogates him, with Winter and CIA counterintelligence officer Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) observing, all skeptical. Orlov claims on "Day X", Anglophone sleeper agents trained from childhood will destroy the U.S.

Agent "KA-12" will assassinate Russian president Boris Matveyev (Olek Krupa), a reformer dedicated to improving relations with the United States, at the funeral of the American vice-president. Orlov reveals that KA-12 is named "Evelyn Salt", and instruments measuring truth confirm his entire story. Salt protests her innocence, calls husband Mike to verify his safety, and gets only his recorded message.

Peabody detains Salt, but she flees to an empty floor, concocts an explosive weapon from materials at hand, and escapes the lockdown and armed team. She gets to her nearby apartment and sees evidence Mike was kidnapped. Just ahead of the CIA team, she climbs out the window to a neighbor, with a knapsack containing her dog, weapons, and a spider. Although pursuers trap her on a bridge, she rolls and jumps from moving truck roof tops to escape.

In New York City, Salt extracts venom from the spider, dyes her blonde hair black, and studies printouts of underground tunnel plans. At the funeral, she takes down Secret Service squads, explodes the floor below the Russian president, so he falls to her in the basement. She shoots the president, but refrains from shooting Peabody, and surrenders instead. The media reports that the Russian president has died.

Salt escapes custody again. She heads to a barge where Orlov is hiding with other sleeper agents. Salt remembers, in a series of flashbacks, growing up in the Soviet Union and being trained, along with other children, by Orlov to obey him. Orlov tests her loyalty to him by having Mike killed in front of her. Satisfied she is loyal, Orlov briefs her on the next mission, to rendezvous with another agent who will help her assassinate the American president. Salt cuts Orlov's throat with the glass bottle they were drinking from, takes grenades, guns, and calmly, coldly, kills everyone else on the barge.

Salt meets Shnaider (Corey Stoll), who uses his cover as a Czech NATO liaison to get Salt, disguised as his male aide, into the White House. Shnaider launches a suicidal attack, so the Secret Service and Winter move the president to the underground bunker. Salt takes down everyone in her way, slides down the elevator shaft, gets to the final bullet-proof glass shielded room, and takes out their security cameras.

The president (Hunt Block) gets the national nuclear weapons ready to fire. Winter kills everyone except the president, introduces himself as Nikolai Tarkovsky, and knocks him out when he refuses to cooperate. Winter aims missiles at Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and Tehran, Iran, to unite millions of Muslims against the United States.

Salt persuades Winter to let her inside for their Russian triumph, until the television reports that Matveyev is alive. Winter rebukes Salt for falling in love with Mike. He wanted Mike abducted, for Salt to be the patsy, himself to be the hero.

Salt breaks in through the door control switch, and they fight for the nuclear football. Salt wins and aborts the strikes, just before Peabody and Secret Service agents capture her. She jumps off a stairway and strangles Winter with her wrist chain.

On a helicopter ride to FBI custody, Salt convinces Peabody that she saved the day, and hunting down the rest of the KA sleeper agents will take both of them. She wants revenge because "they took everything". He remembers that she refrained from killing him or the Russian president in the church, and gets a text that fingerprints place her on Orlov's body-strewn barge. He finishes jimmying her cuffs open, and signals her when to jump for the Potomac River below. The final scene shows her running through the woods, soaked and free.