Salt is kind of a train wreck.

First of all, Angelina Jolie’s head now officially looks like the Moai on Easter Island. I know she has limited control over how her face looks, but she can at least try not to shrink everything below it until it looks like a stiff wind will knock her over.

Secondly, the interrogation scene you’ve seen in the trailer seems like it’s from a different movie once you see the backstory that produced it.

The big buzz about the film is that the role was originally meant for Tom Cruise. I guess we’re supposed to be impressed that the studio was gender-blind enough to cast a woman in a man’s action vehicle. Maybe I would be, were it not for the fact that Tom Cruise wouldn’t be a bit more convincing dispatching giant G-men. She’s gotta be taller than him, and I bet they’d balance pretty well on a teeter-totter too.

It’s hard to imagine that they didn’t tweak the script a bunch to fit their new star. Would Tom Cruise’s Salt have such deep feelings for his cover wife that he’d jeopardize his mission? Would he cry and worry about the welfare of his puppy when he’s out running for his life?

It’s supposed to be a twist plot about sleeper agents in the cold war, but Jolie’s smirk is so vague that we suspect her immediately.

The logic is spotty, the action scenes are an affront to the intelligence, and they blow the twist in the first 15 minutes. This isn’t a gender-blind summer action blockbuster. It’s a direct-to-cable Wings Hauser vehicle, with Angie Jolie as Wings Hauser. Avoid like typhoid.