Is there anyone who can play charming yet unsettling like Denzel Washington? Even when he’s not playing a legitimate anti-hero, there’s always a vague sense of threat from his characters, in the stillness of his face and the wryness of his delivery.

Washington uses the trademark sociopathy to great affect in “Safe House”, the new spy thriller meant partially to re-charge Ryan Reynolds career after the “Green Lantern” disaster of 2011. Reynolds seems to exist mostly to get out of Washington’s way, the tactic followed by every white guy in a Denzel Washington movie which I like to call the “Ethan Hawke Defense.”

Matt Weston (Reynolds) at the beginning appears to have the un-sexiest job in the CIA, as a keeper of a CIA safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. He spends most of his time listening to French language tapes in an empty room, and telling elaborate lies about his work to his French national girlfriend. His uniquely boring life is upended when Tobin Frost (Washington) a former agent who’s been selling secrets for almost a decade, inexplicably wanders into a U.S. Consulate and allows himself to be captured (the trailer gives you a rough approximation of what will happen next).

Cape Town is shown in gritty, stunning glory, and director Daniel Espinosa makes the best use of location shooting I’ve seen in a long time. The city operates as both an ally and a potential enemy to the two fugitives, from its upscale downtown, to the chaos of Green Point soccer stadium, to the maze of a shanty town. There is very little politics in “Safe House”, but Espinosa doesn’t ignore the realities of Cape Town either, allowing the city to tell the story and add to the sharp realism of the action sequences.

The cat and mouse game at the heart of the story is a little played, and frankly most of it is stolen from other spy movies anyway. But the exquisite little details, ingeniously picked by the director and his stars, allow you to forget that this is a story that’s been told before: a spectacular crane shot of truck barreling through a shanty town’s throughways; the jaunty smile Frost gives when taking pictures of himself to add to a forged passport, the way Weston hugs his girlfriend and buries his face in her hair. The details make this movie special, make it more than just another Saturday-night throwaway picture. Washington’s charming villain is just the cherry on top.

"Salt" wants so much to be "The Bourne Identity."

It has all the elements. It has a strong lead actor, a cavalry of character actors who look good in suits, lots of hand-held camera cinematography and a dark, twisted aura.

But despite it’s excellent qualities (and there are many) there’s something missing from this otherwise rousing spy thriller. It’s got the cool factor and the look of "Bourne." But it’s got none of the soul.

"Salt" refers to Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie), a CIA agent who’s forced to run from her employers (live Schreiber and the fantastic Chiwetel Ejiofor)when she’s accused of being a Russian spy by a defector.

Salt was originally written as a man’s role, and it’s fascinating to see how the plot adapts itself to having a woman in the role. Instead of rescuing a wife and baby, Salt sets off to find her sweet arachnologist husband (August Diehl) who’s been taken in the wake of her charges. We don’t often see this reversal in a major Hollywood picture, but director Phillip Noyce and writer Kurt Wimmer manage to navigate the startling new idea with almost blas© confidence. The only bump is when Salt actually needs to dress up as a man to get into the White House- it’s a little too on-the-nose, a little too graduate school gender theory for my taste.

Wimmer’s script may navigate gender bending with aplomb, but when it comes to a well-honed action film he tends to fall flat. The problem with "Salt" is it’s too big. There’s a conspiracy plot involving the Russian government planting long-term sleeper agents in the U.S. Plausible, especially considering the recent news that Russian spies have been spending the last 20 years hanging out in Montclair, N.J. But in this movie their mission is nothing less than killing the President and "taking over America." It’s an old-school, dated story, based in Cold War paranoia that just doesn’t apply today. Even more, the plot loses focus about halfway through, confusing Salt’s back story and getting lost in the woods of its own twists and turns.

Jolie is probably the only woman who could pull off this plot without looking ridiculous. In one of the most memorable shots in the movie, she stands on the Staten Island Ferry, wrapped in a fur stole and wearing a magnificent Russian hat. You’re both amused by the ludicrousness of the image, but because it’s Jolie it makes a weird sort of sense. Her beauty is so unusual, so foreign, why wouldn’t she be posing, looking like Julie Christie in "Dr. Zhivago"? She’s flanked by Schreiber, doing a delightfully campy Southern accent, and Ejiofor, who I would watch reading out of the phone book (as long as he did it shirtless). All three are people who you love to look at- the way they move, gesture, even the way they sit down. Diehl, who had a small role in "Inglourious Basterds", fits in perfectly with their coterie; he’s able to stoke the chemistry with Jolie in just a few short scenes.

The action scenes are, unfortunately, a problem. In their desperation to make the film PG-13, they appear to have edited the scenes to eliminate blood, injury and visceral power from the shots. This makes for a weirdly clean, and soulless action scene, and one where the hand-held camera simply doesn’t work. I certainly don’t need to see brains and viscera, but these sterile battles just can’t compare to better shot scenes in "Bourne" or the latest "Bond" films.

There is, however, a pretty awesome scene where Salt makes a rocket launcher out of office furniture and cleaning supplies. I wish we could have seen more scenes of that style- a sort of resourceful action sequence that doesn’t rely on tricky editing or impossible technology to achieve its ends. "Salt" wants to be "Bourne" but Noyce forgot what made "Bourne" great: dirty, raw action scenes balanced with tightly controlled plot. "Salt" is too unbalanced. It wants to do too many things. And in the end, despite it’s positives, it’s actually accomplished nothing.

The British government has revoked the citizenship and passport of one of the main attractions in the US-Russia spy case.

Anna Chapman, the 28-year-old redhead who pleaded guilty in New York to procuring information for a foreign government, had previously been married to a British man. Chapman was a Russian sleeper agent sent back to Russia on Friday in the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.

Chapman has been a tabloid sensation since sexy photos of hear appeared online in social networking sites.

As the second season of the breakthrough USA Network action drama “Burn Notice” drew to a close, Michael Weston, the former spy who was fired or “burned” came face to face with the people who ruined his career in an underhanded effort to recruit him to their own operation, and he told them to get lost.

So they did, and now Michael is on his own, with no shadow agency to keep him off the radar from cops and about a dozen countries he pissed off over the years.

Season three starts off with something a little different “" Michael is being chased by the cops, which is not much of a surprise. But rather than fight his way out by blowing something up, he surrenders and gets thrown in jail until an old friend, Harlan, from the special forces days shows up and uses a lawyer buddy to bail him out.

Now we’re really in familiar ground: Harlan needs help. He has a Venezuelan girlfriend “" family farm stolen “" father in jail “" gangster in Miami. Michael is back on the job, and “Burn Notice” gets right back in stride with the back-story-client-back-story plot we see in most episodes.

But not everything is as it seems. There’s betrayal, twists and turns, and Michael learns that with no spy agency to protect him he’s truly on his own.

At the end of the episode, Michael’s mom, Madeline, offers some sage-like advice by telling Michael, Fiona and Sam Axe that the three of them need to stick together, and the stage is set for more adventure this season.

“Burn Notice” has grown in popularity, and at the base of its fandom is a rabid group of diehards who follow every one of Michael’s yogurt cups and all the familiar phrases like “it’s not personal” and “el jefe.” Season three is full of promise for both existing fans and newbies who want to see what all the hype is about.

Chuck, the hit NBC TV show that made its debut last year as a tag of Action-comedy, has become identified as the action-comedy-drama with-a-cliffhanger show after almost every episode. Obtaining rather good reception for a new show that had problems during the writers strike, the first season introduced Chuck reading an email from an old friend in Stanford. As he reads the email a bunch of random pictures jump on the screen and Chuck passes out after watching them.

It turns out that Chuck’s friend, a rouge spy, had given him a CIA computer with an “intersect” that was put in his brain. With no way of extracting it, the CIA has no chance but to keep him protected until they can make a new intersect. His handlers become hot blonde-and badass- Sarah Walker and a very sarcastic Major John Casey. They protect Chuck everywhere including in his job at the Buy More shop (a Best Buy look-alike).

Chuck was such a success that it was signed for a second season. Now, the CIA has finally found a person for the intersect Chuck was mistakenly given and will be able to put it to good use. But just as Chuck is about to go back to a normal life the brain of the person he was to be replaced with blows up and Chuck’s hopes are dashed.

Chuck is often seen being used as a “spy” despite the fact that he has had no training in any form of spy technique. This usually gets his identity compromised and Chuck is held captive time and time again.

In season one Chuck’s handler Sarah is struggling between Chuck and his ex-friend Bryce Larkin (the one who sent the intersect to Chuck). Chuck and Sarah have been on and off in the last season and its hard to tell if they really even love each other. This season will be interesting to see how their relationship develops.‚ 

Also in season two, Chuck, Sarah and John are found doing missions for the government using Chuck as a spy most of the time and getting him into life threatening danger without remorse.

The show still has a good base of fans and as long as the writers decide to take it somewhere different in the next few episodes they should gain even more viewers. For originality of story line but hoping to see new twists Chuck’s second season gets a for out of five in my scale.