Salt and Fire (2016)

By r96sk

Oof. As I always say when I give films such a bad rating/review (though, tbf, only the ninth time I've rated 1/10...), it is nothing personal and I respect everyone who worked on this film and, of course, understand it isn't easy to make films. I never enjoy slating one, but this... deary me. I'm not sure where to begin. The dialogue. The dialogue! I genuinely do not believe I've seen a movie with such truly awful dialogue, the amount of times I was holding my head out of cringe was immeasurable. You just know the writer, presumably one Werner Herzog, thought he was prime William Shakespeare when he put it all together. It's not just terrible in itself, it also simply isn't written for the actors - none of it sounds natural out of them whatsoever. Talking of the actors, they merit some iffiness too. Listen, they are severely hampered by those behind the scenes but more was needed - especially from Michael Shannon, who I am a big fan of but his performance is... questionable, at best. Again, the ill-fitting dialogue did not help. Elsewhere, Veronica Ferres tries and is likeable but... yeah, not good. At least the Arancibia kids add some charm to things. Those children are put into the film around the middle and somehow (nothing bad on them, just their characters) stay until the very end. Those scenes with them, and Ferres' Laura, are sweet in isolation (pardon the pun), but wow do they feel entirely out of place and disconnected (pardon the p...) to everything that proceeds - to the point that the sweetness drains away. 1/10 always feels harsh to me, yet this is very much deserving of that rating in my opinion. Dire stuff, even at just around 90 minutes. The kids and the neat locations are all I've got by way of positives.