Pulpy, violent, exploitative and trashy, The Salvation harkens back to the spaghetti Western era before the genre became introspective with the likes of Unforgiven or No Country For Old Men. Jon (Mads Mikkelsen) arrived in the West with his brother several years ago, but when local outlaw Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) terrorizes him and his town he takes justice into his own hands. The Danish angle – frikadeller Western? liquorice Western? – is interesting initially, clearly setting Jon apart as an outsider, subversively suggesting Americans are unable to deal with their own corruption, but otherwise it adds little as the film settles into a straightforward revenge plot.
Westerns are so infrequent that fans of the genre will enjoy the simple pleasures here, of which there are plenty. Everything is exaggerated, heightened beyond any resemblance to reality: blood explodes from bullet hits; evil is so evil it shoots an old woman in the head; the Mayor and Sheriff are so weak they hand over said old woman to be shot; the women are dead, fleeing, or silenced (literally, in specific case, with her tongue cut out). The West (recreated in South Africa) is dry and dusty, the sun is harsh and the colors are saturated to the point of garishness. A scene is shot through a doorway, most certainly taking an note from John Ford’s classic The Searchers. Like the puddles of “sticky oil” the villains believe will be worth money soon, everything plays out on the surface level.
The cast do their best with thinly drawn parts. Mikkelsen is a bundle of stoicism and stubble, blending in well with an era when men were men, but his arc from loving family man to vengeful badass is foreshadowed and predictable from the very beginning. He was a soldier in his home country, goes the convenient backstory, and his proficiency in killing is never remarked on again.
There’s the suggestion that Delarue’s ruthlessness stems from his work clearing land of Indians, that killing so many people damaged his mind, but again it’s raised once and dropped. For all intents and purposes, he’s evil because he’s written that way, consumed by greed because he’s a villain. Dean Morgan tries to give him more of a personality but he’s fighting an uphill battle all the way. Eva Green‘s specialty lately has been playing women living in male power fantasies – 300: Rise of an Empire, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and now this. As a victim of sexual abuse but also a criminal working for her abusers, Princess has an interesting moral ambiguity, but this is entirely squandered as she turns on Delarue so early in the film.
For some, the sheer simplicity of The Salvation will be its appeal, but anyone after a film that does something new with the genre will have to look elsewhere.
The Salvation screened at London Film Festival and will be released by IFC Films.