The Salvation

Sometimes you gotta sacrifice a single sheep to save the rest.

The Salvation is directed by Kristian Levring and Levring co-writes the screenplay with Anders Thomas Jensen. It stars Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Eric Cantona, Mikael Persbrandt, Jonathan Pryce and Douglas Henshall. Music is by Kasper Winding and cinematography by Jens Schlosser.

1871 and ex-patriot Danish soldier Jon Jensen (Mikkelsen) is, after 7 years of foundation building, welcoming his wife and son to a new life in America. But after they all board a stagecoach bound for their homestead, events will see that journey not be completed. And thus begins a tale of retribution and redemption.

There are few smiles in The Salvation, in fact viewers w...

Revenge for a revenge.

It is a Danish western revenge flick set in the American soil, so 99 per cent it was in the English language. Well, in my opinion, it is underrated for sure. It was not anything stylish like QT's recent western films, but quite usual presentation yet very majestic. The story takes place in a couple of days in a small town in the 1871. The turnaround in the theme was great. Initially, it leaves an impression of a revenge based tale, but later becomes oil warfare, something quite resembles the original situation of the American at that time.

In the last few weeks I have been watching lots of comedies, dramas and other soft themed films, so suddenly I felt too much violence from this. But as always I get used to ...

This is a decent enough Danish-made spaghetti western. Nothing more and nothing less. It could easily have been a young Clint Eastwood in this movie. Instead the lead character is Mads Mikkelsen who makes a quite reasonable performance as far as I am concerned.

I have to say that it felt a bit funny when the characters spoke Danish in the first parts of the movie. It did add a bit of special touch, at least for me, to the movie though. I guess that people who do not understand Danish may be less thrilled about that though.

The movie itself is a fairly straightforward good guy versus bad guy revenge story. It is a good old-fashioned Western without any silly complicated plot and without trying to make any attempts to show the real west or ...

I anticipated more from it, though 'The Salvation' is a worthwhile 90 minutes.

It reminded me of 1973's '<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/high-plains-drifter/" rel="nofollow">High Plains Drifter</a>', not necessarily bar for bar but more the general vibe of it all... at least in terms of what I remember from that Clint Eastwood flick. This 2014 release is good if generally formulaic, it probably starts stronger than it finishes but all in all it is watchable. I caught a glimpse of the cast list before watching and it got me excited.

Mads Mikkelsen, naturally, but also seeing Eva Green, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Eric Cantona and Jonathan Pryce attached raised my hopes. If I'm honest, I've seen better from all of them (aside from Cantona...