It is the year 2003 in North Korea.
North Korean soldiers torture a woman named Evelyn Salt.
They accuse her of espionage.
Soon after, she is escorted to safety by her superior, Ted Winter.
As Evelyn walks, she asks him why they rescue her.
Ted tells her that it is thanks to her boyfriend Mike, who petitioned all the members of the
government that she be freed.
So, to prevent him from stirring up more unnecessary publicity, they agreed to save her.
Sometime later, Evelyn lives with her husband in Washington, DC.
Mike is an arachnologist, meaning he studies spiders.
Evelyn observes Mike working at the breakfast table with spiders.
She offers to make him breakfast, but he jokingly refuses, making fun of her cooking.
Evelyn is a CIA agent, and in the next scene, we see her at work.
Currently, she is learning online how to fold a napkin.
She wants to make a perfect anniversary dinner.
Winter approaches, and they get ready to leave as the workday ends.
[Rising Action] As they leave, another officer tells them
that a defector has arrived and wants to give away some information.
Evelyn and Winter follow the agent and arrive upstairs.
The defector is waiting in the room and is given neural scans to determine if he is lying.
The agents send Evelyn to talk to him.
The defector reveals his real name, Orlov, and tells the story of a Russian spy program
set up during the Cold War.
In this program, the children of American families were kidnapped.
Then, they replaced these kids with Russian children trained by a Russian official to
become spies.
These spies are called K-12.
They would assume the identity of the American citizen until Day X, the date of action on
which they would strike.
Day X is very close, and events will begin with the assassination of the Russian President
at the funeral of the Vice President of the United States.
And they will end with the assassination of the President of the United States the next
day.
Evelyn listens, but she does not believe a single word.
So, Winter tells her to end the interview.
As she leaves, Orlov reveals that Evelyn Salt is the spy who will kill the President.
Evelyn is shocked and leaves the room.
When she enters the observation room, the neural scan determines that Orlov has been
truthful throughout the interview.
Evelyn begins talking to counterintelligence officers Peabody and Winter, claiming her
innocence.
Winter believes her and argues with Peabody, who instead suspects that it is true.
Evelyn asks to contact Mike because when a spy's cover is blown, often their whole life
is in danger.
Watching Winter and Peabody argue, she realizes she is in danger.
Two officers escort Orlov, and they enter the elevator.
Orlov pulls a blade out of his shoe, kills both guards, and escapes.
The emergency alarm sounds, Winters and Peabody are alerted to Orlov's escape.
Evelyn takes advantage of this moment of confusion and escapes leaving the room and attempting
to leave the building.
Before long, they close all the exits, and Evelyn finds herself back in an interrogation
room, where she prepares an explosive device to fire at the arriving SWAT team.
When the SWAT team arrives, they open the door, and she fires, knocking them unconscious.
Evelyn steals a gun and uses it to escape through a window and then arrives on the street.
She gets into a cab and tries to call Mike again.
He doesn't answer and breaks the SIM card.
She gets out of the cab and enters his apartment.
She notices Mike's overturned chair and his half-eaten sandwich.
It is evident that he has been kidnapped.
While she packs her bag, Winters and Peabody assemble a SWAT team to go to her apartment.
They arrive just as she climbs out the window.
She narrowly escapes Peabody, then climbs into a neighbor's apartment.
The little girl sees her and lets her in.
As she changes her clothes, she flashes back to how she met her husband.
But she doesn't have much time to dream and walks away from the apartment.
She is spotted by Winter on the street.
Another chase follows, and they manage to pin Evelyn on an overpass.
Apparently, she has no way out, but she jumps onto a truck that passes under the overpass.
Peabody shoots her and manages to hit her in the stomach area.
Her adrenaline charge doesn't flinch, allowing her to jump from one truck to another.
In the process, she is still being chased by agents.
In the end, she falls to the ground and steals a motorcycle.
The officers get stuck between vehicles, and she manages to escape.
Evelyn heads to a public restroom to treat her wound.
That evening she takes a bus to New York City.
Upon arrival, Evelyn rents a small hotel room.
She completely changes her look, dyes her hair, and steals some clothes.
She must follow the plan so that Orlov won't suspect anything and kill Mike.
So, she starts planning how to enter the cathedral.
At this point, another flashback shows us that Evelyn Salt is indeed a spy.
She was born and raised in Russia and was taken in at a young age to become a K-12 spy.
All the children learned about English, society, manners, customs, and laws of the United States.
The next day, the Russian President is already present at the funeral.
Evelyn boards a subway train and places a smoke bomb.
While all the police officers are distracted, she gets off the train.
Then she goes into the tunnels under the cathedral.
In the church, the funeral had already begun.
The Russian President gets up to give a speech, and Evelyn throws an explosive device right
below the President's position.
The floor crumbles beneath him, causing him to fall into the crypt next to her.
Panic ensues, and security officers spring into action, but they are not in time because
Evelyn shoots the Russian President.
Peabody intervenes, and she surrenders.
The agents take her away, and Winter wishes her to rot in prison for what she has done.
She gets into a police SUV, but the officers forget that they are dealing with one of Russia's
best spies.
In fact, she manages to neutralize both of her guards from the car.
She stuns the driver, destroying the police cars in front and behind them.
Evelyn takes control of the SUV and ends up on the road below, destroying the car.
People come up, and Evelyn runs away as if nothing has happened.
In the following scenes, Evelyn is on a ferry.
She arrives at a scrap metal yard.
There she meets Orlov and embraces him.
He is the man who took her in and trained her to become a Russian spy.
She is then taken to a ship in the Hudson that serves as a base for Russian spies.
Evelyn learns that the next step in their plan is to seize American nuclear weapons.
She asks for her husband, and Orlov takes her into the ship's hull.
She sees Mike being held hostage.
To check whether she is loyal, Orlov orders to shoot him and watches her reaction.
Evelyn holds back her emotions with difficulty, and Orlov has confirmed that she is loyal
to the plan.
Along with them are other Russian spies with whom Evelyn grew up together.
Orlov escorts her to his office to reveal more details about the plan.
The following day Evelyn is supposed to meet with a spy named Shnaider disguised as a NATO
officer.
They are to travel together to Washington to kill the American President.
Evelyn pours them a drink and then suddenly breaks the bottle and pushes it into Orlov's
neck.
After that, she takes a couple of grenades and kills the other spies on the boat.
Later, Evelyn leaves the boat and goes to the meeting point to encounter the fake NATO
officer.
Evelyn gets on the private jet, and when the NATO officer arrives, she is stunned.
When she was a child in the former USSR, he was one of her classmates.
It is revealed that Evelyn was at the top of the class.
Thus, Shnaider discloses that Evelyn's job is to neutralize the President of the United
States.
Upon their arrival in Washington, he gives her a new identity card and disguises himself
as a NATO officer.
They enter the White House, and Shnaider makes a sacrifice and blows himself up.
This event forces the President to escape to the bunker where Evelyn is supposed to
kill him.
Winter is part of the group that defends the President.
They flee with him to the bunker.
While they are in the elevator, Evelyn is on top of them, jumping from floor to floor
in the elevator structure.
Once she reaches the bunker level, she proceeds to go through the bunker before the door is
closed completely.
In the bunker, the President is raising the terror alert.
Because Russia is deploying its nuclear weapons in retaliation for the killing of the Russian
President.
In the process, Winter sees Evelyn on the cameras and asks the agents to split up to
stop her.
[Climax] Suddenly, he grabs a gun and kills everyone
in the room.
In the end, there is only him and the President.
Winter reveals to the President that he is a Russian spy and orders him to activate the
nuclear deployments.
The President refuses, and Winter hits him and knocks him unconscious.
Evelyn neutralizes the agents and approaches the bulletproof window.
She motions for Winter to use the President's hand to reauthorize and activate the attack.
Evelyn asks him to let her in.
As Winter turns to open the door, news reports appear on the television revealing that the
Russian President is not dead as previously thought.
Winter realizes that he cannot trust her and thinks that her return from North Korea has
changed her.
He knew that she was in love with Mike and that this would compromise the plan.
It was Winter who had told Orlov to kidnap and kill Mike.
Evelyn becomes enraged at this point and attempts to shoot through the glass.
She then goes to the other side of the room and finds the access box next to the door.
She shoots until the wall behind it is exposed.
Then rewire the box so she can enter the bunker room.
The two begin to fight, and when the weapon's activation is almost complete, the Secret
Service arrives and overtakes them.
Evelyn is in time to unplug the computer, canceling the attack.
She and Winter are taken outside.
As Evelyn is led out, she sees Winter and throws herself at him, tightening the handcuffs
around his neck, eventually killing him.
[Falling Action] She is taken to Peabody, and they get into
a helicopter.
She explains how things have gone, and Peabody starts to believe her.
[Resolution] Evelyn reveals that other Russian spies are
out there who will stop at nothing.
They have taken everything from her life, so he lets her go to stop them.