Everybody dies.*1 This harsh but universal truth has rarely been exemplified quite as forcefully than in Kristian Levring's good old-fashioned (albeit with a startlingly contemporary attitude toward screen-violence) revenge-Western, The Salvation. Out to avenge the murder of his wife and son in a remote US settlement, war veteran Jon (Mads Mikkelsen) is forced to take on a gang of outlaws led by the brutish Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his unwilling bride-to-be, the devious Madelaine (Eva Green).
Well, there's an alarmingly high quantity of missing-eyes in this film, isn't there? Was cyclopean-vision really that much of a problem back in the Wild West, or is it being used to illustrate why 'Optometrist' rarely features in the wooden store-signage on display in Westerns?
Flippancy aside, The Salvation is pretty grim stuff, and director Kristian Levring lingers on the scowling faces of his cast as much as he does the ochre backdrop of the South African desert which stands in for frontier-America. Speaking of which, there's some stunning camerawork and lighting on display here (although please remember, DoPs, vignetted shots look great until the camera starts to move, then the film looks like you're trying out the filters on your first holiday movie). That said, at a tight 92 minutes, the screenplay has no time to mess about. That scenery may be beautiful, but the audience aren't left standing around to take it all in.
A tight script is minimal on exposition, setting the scene then focusing on the characters themselves and their actions. Although the film is predominantly English-Language, the stretches of subtitled Danish are more than welcome, adding an extra layer of realism to an already grim tale. Although for a film intent on showing the harsh reality of human nature, it seems odd that not a single firearm (and there are many) shows any sign of recoil, at all. Mikkelsen, Morgan and Green all give solid performances and are backed up ably by Jonathan Pryce as the township's cowardly mayor/undertaker, and wee Dougie Henshall as his corrupt Sheriff. I'm not entirely sure why Eric Cantona is onboard as a fat, bearded but ultimately one-dimensional outlaw, but he doesn't derail things too much, so I'll give him points for trying.
My only real complaint about the film is a grammatical error in one of the subtitles. Early in the first act, Jon says to his wife and child, "I've build an extension so there's room for all of us". 'I've build'? 'I've build'? First we have Tom Hardy making up his own words in Child 44, then the subtitles in an actual released film have infant-school level grammar? Who's in charge of Hollywood, these days?
But if you like your Westerns full of barely restrained threat and one-hit-kills, The Salvation may just be right up your alley.
To be fair, this is a one for cheap-Tuesdays or Meerkat Wednesdays.
It'll be a decent rental. Unless you're into relentlessly grim tales of lawless outback towns, in which case it's £12 well spent.
I don't have a lot of history with Mads Mikkelsen, but he seems ideal for the role, yes.
I think it does, but I'd have liked the film to achieve it over and extra half-hour or so.
Not really.
There bloody isn't. For shame.
Mads Mikkelsen appeared in 2010's Clash Of The Titans remake, as did Liam 'Qui-Gon' Neeson.
*1 Okay, not 'everyone' in here dies, but trust me - you can't expect a happy ending for a story which was never really happy in the first place.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
You know when you read a human-interest type story or article, and somewhere near the bottom there'll be a line saying "negotiations have opened over the film-rights to the story", and you mentally picture an over-excited lawyer on the phone to his mum with one or both of them saying "Ooh! Perhaps you'll/I'll be played by Ryan Reynolds in the movie!" and you instantly dismiss that thought, not because the conversation wouldn't happen but because that's just not a feasible casting choice for a gentle, Sunday afternoon drama..?
Well, Woman In Gold stars Ryan Reynolds as fresh-face lawyer, in the true story of Maria Altman, a Jewish refugee who managed to flee Austria during the Second World War, and their legal campaign to reclaim Gustav Klimt's iconic Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, when documentation is unearthed revealing that the Austrian State Gallery acquired the painting in terms which voided the original intent of the owner's will.
If you think that sounds more like an earnest courtroom drama than a film about art, then you'd be partially correct. The film spends around two thirds of its running-time in the early twenty-first century, following Maria (Helen Mirren)'s legal proceedings with her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg*1, complete with research-montages full of brow-rubbing and photocopiers with green scanner-lights. The other third of the film is an ongoing flashback-thread, showing Maria's home-life in Vienna as a little girl with her aunt (Adele from the painting) and during the war as a young woman, up to and including her escape to the USA as a refugee.
I think it's fair to say that the period-pieces are far more engaging than the modern ones, and the story of the painting is far more interesting than the one of the legal battle surrounding it, even though the strands rely on each other fully. The cast in the earlier timeline were largely unknown to me (and the ones I did recognise, I recognised as 'character' actors) so it was easier to believe in that part of the story. Because as credible as they both are in this, you never forget that you're watching Helen Mirren and Ryan Reyolds. They're both 'good', but the film should really be about the painting, not the performers, and I think a slightly less starry level of casting would have helped this (although obviously the names help put bums on seats, which is the other important thing).
Woman In Gold has some stretches of absolute, undiluted brilliance (in both of its timelines); moments which make you glad you've gone to watch the film in a cinema; moments in which the massive screen concentrates and amplifies the emotion of the story and the history of the artwork. But these are punctuated by some of the most cliched and perfunctory scenes you've witnessed outside of a Channel5 made-for-TV movie. The film doggedly hangs on to its 'will the underdog succeed in winning the battle?' methodology, which - even if the viewer is unfamiliar with the story of the painting - is redundant to the point of insulting the audience. SPOILER: Yes, they win. It's a true story. People don't make films of this sort of thing unless they win. Although to be fair, people don't make films of fictional cases like this unless they win, either.
But the great moments outweigh the bad ones and make Woman In Gold well worth watching. It's certainly changed the way I'll look at the painting, and that's the important thing, i think.
With the best will in the world, probably not.
It's a sort of "£5 on DVD" type film. You might watch it more than once, but you won't watch it repeatedly.
Sadly not.
Despite battling with its own screenplay, it does.
Nope.
There isn't. Surprisingly.
Helen Mirren voiced Deep Thought in 2005's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy film, a film which also starred Warwick 'Wicket' Davis.
*1 I wanted to say 'her lawyer and nephew' there, but I'm fairly certain he's not her nephew. They're definitely related, but in such a convoluted way that the film doesn't actually put a name on the connection. Anyway, my bad for not paying attention to that part of the exposition at the start of the film.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
