LFF 2014: The Salvation ***
Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen was made to be a cowboy – handsome, brooding, fearless and unforgiving. In The Salvation he puts those qualities to the test. It’s a Danish Western by Danish writer-director Kristian Levring and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen set in the wild, Wild West (1870s America) that’s as ruthless as it’s sumptuous to look at. It offers nothing new to the genre, other than it’s aesthetically pleasing to the Western buff.
Mikkelsen is Jon a former Danish soldier relocated to the land of the American Dream with his brother Peter (a similarly striking-looking Mikael Persbrandt). He sets up some farming land for his family to come and live with him on. After collecting his wife and son from the station, the family is forced to endure a harrowing stage coach ride with a couple of thugs, resulting in Jon being forced out of the carriage and separated from his wife and child. When tragedy strikes, Jon takes revenge that puts him in the direct path of sadistic local gangster Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who holds the developing town to ransom.
The filmmakers’ dig at the American Dream concept is certainly not lost on anyone watching, as well as America’s present-day obsession with oil control. However, The Salvation is technically beautiful to view – some digital effects aside – and there is a great attention to detail that other Westerns lack in their impatience to get to the punch-ups and shoot-outs. This film also has its fair share of brutality, best illustrated by Delarue’s execution scene of townsfolk after no-one can tell him who killed his brother – one of the hoodlums from the stage coach. Added to the action are beginning scenes that are Film Noir-ish in style evoking a growing sense of foreboding.
Mikkelsen is as solid and visually fascinating as ever, playing a character that is Clint Eastwood-esque in manner, never squandering words in his deadly quest as Jon. Persbrandt says even less, but both have a great screen chemistry that relays their thoughts at any one moment. In fact, this Western is sparing with the dialogue, allowing the setting to first impose the brewing tension to come.
Eva Green who we are used to hearing firing back bold retorts in many of her previous roles plays a sultry mute called Princess ‘imprisoned’ by Delarue. This role shows just how versatile she is when she has to convey her character’s thoughts through expression and little else, often stealing the scene. The dialogue is reserved for Morgan who is both shocking and wildly entertaining as villain Delarue. Even former footballer-turned-actor Eric Cantona as his henchman Corsican is given more than one comical line to say and revels in playing a cowboy and all the traits that go with it.
The Salvation is a highly visual Western, one that bathes its star, Mikkelsen, in a compelling light. Even though the plot is a no-brainer, it does feel wanting in places, something that would be even more obvious if it wasn’t for its equally captivating star cast. It stops short of being ostentatious, purely due to the abrupt brutality or grittiness of certain scenes, but will primarily be remembered by Mikkelsen fans as the actor’s venture into the Wild West.
3/5 stars
By @FilmGazer
