Tradecraft: Noyce Returns To Spying

Variety reports that Phillip Noyce will direct Columbia's highly-intriguing, Tom Cruise-starring spy thriller Edwin A. Salt. The trade gives the same capsule description of the film as it did last summer when Cruise first became attached to the Kurt Wimmer script: "The drama casts Cruise as a CIA officer who's accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy. He must elude capture long enough to clear his name." Noyce, of course, is no stranger to espionage, having previously directed the excellent The Quiet American, the two solid Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, and the lacklustre Val Kilmer incarnation of The Saint. Hotel Rwanda's Terry George and The Kingdom's Peter Berg have both previously been attached to direct Edwin A. Salt, but eventually moved on.