Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

The Salvation Blu-ray Movie Review

No One Was Saved

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 6, 2015

Writer/director Kristian Levring is a distinctively Danish filmmaker, one of the early adherents of the infamous (and now-defunct) Dogme95 movement founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg . But Levring is also a cosmopolitan talent who lives in England, frequently works in English, and whose first major work, The King Is Alive, revolved around an impromptu production of King Lear. Levring also happens to be a passionate fan of Westerns, and The Salvation is the culmination of his lifelong dream to add his own contribution to the canon. Working with Danish screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, Levring wrote a script into which he poured classic tropes culled from every Western he could fit into one movie. According to the Blu-ray extras, sixty-two are referenced throughout The Salvation. Then the director assembled an international cast and brought them to South Africa, where the rolling plains and majestic mountains provided an effective substitute for the American frontier, just as Spain once doubled for it in Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns.

Anchoring the film is the memorable Mads Mikkelson, currently finishing his run as television's Hannibal, whose lean, expressive features seem ideally suited to the kind of rugged hero typified by Shane, Marshall Will Kane in High Noon, the Outlaw Josey Wales and the nameless stranger in High Plains Drifter, all sources on which Levring clearly drew in creating The Salvation. On the strength of Mikkelsen's performance, and that of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as his chief nemesis, The Salvation has racked up some strong reviews, but as I watched the film, I found myself curiously unmoved, as Levring checked off the boxes on his list of Western motifs. Everything is beautifully executed, but all of it feels like an empty genre exercise. It has none of the fun, the lowdown, pulpy indulgence that made Westerns popular in the first place. More on that after we talk about the story.

Like Sergio Leone in Once Upon a Time in the West, Levring opens at a train station, but there's no intense buildup and no gun battle. Former Danish soldier Jon Jensen (Mikkelsen) is awaiting the arrival of the family he left behind seven years ago when he came to America to seek his fortune with his brother, Peter (Mikael Persbrandt). Jon has prospered sufficiently that he now feels he can provide for his wife, Marie (Nanna Øland Fabricius), and their young son, Kresten (Toke Lars Bjarke), After a brief and awkward reunion, the Jensen family boards the stagecoach for a long ride to the frontier settlement of Black Creek, the nearest stop to where Jon has built them a house. Peter remains in town at Grand Junction, which turns out to be a fatal mistake.

The Jensens find themselves sharing a coach with a ruffian just released from prison, who we will later learn is the brother of Henry Delarue (Morgan), a wealthy landowner, former Army colonel and, in effect, the ruler of Black Creek. Before the trip is over, Delarue's brother will be dead, killed by Jon Jensen in the defense of his family. Tragically, Jensen's efforts, though lethal, are not enough to save Marie and Kresten.

The bulk of The Salvation is a prolonged battle of vengeance between Delarue and Jensen. Even though the people of Black Creek loathe Delarue, they side with him out of fear. Deliver the man who killed his brother, Delarue tells them, or they'll pay the price—and he coldly executes a few townspeople as proof of his sincerity. Both Mayor Nathan Keane (Jonathan Pryce), who doubles as the local undertaker, and Sheriff Mallick (Douglas Henshall), who doubles as the town preacher, are in Delarue's pocket. Except for his brother, Jon Jensen is alone.

Although Delarue's pursuit of Jensen is personal, it turns out that his use of brutality against the people of Black Creek is more calculated than it initially seems. As is so often the case in unregulated territory, someone is quietly scooping up land on the sly, and Delarue and his gang have been hired to create an incentive to sell. Maybe it has something to do with the railroad. Or maybe it's connected to the stygian lagoon of bubbling goo that people keep riding past. No one in Black Creek knows what it is, but modern eyes will recognize it immediately.

Delarue has an unusual helpmate in his business dealings. He calls her "Princess", but her real name is Madelaine (Eva Green), and she's the widow of the brother killed by Jon Jensen. Rescued from Native Americans who cut out her tongue and disfigured her face with an angry scar, Madelaine presents a mask of defiance to the world. Whether she mourns her husband is impossible to say, nor can one be certain that her attachment to her former brother-in-law is anything more than a matter of necessity. In many respects, Madelaine has more in common with Jon Jensen than anyone else. Both have lost everything they value, but neither will accept defeat.

The Salvation has gun battles, fist fights, a train pursuit and plenty of bad guys who get what's coming to them (including former soccer star Eric Cantona, who plays Delarue's right-hand man). But none of it registers with the kind of emotional impact that leaves a lasting impression, because Levring skips an important step at the beginning. The great Westerns, whether we're talking about Shane, Stagecoach, Rio Bravo, any of Clint Eastwood's directorial efforts or even a re-invention like Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado, always took the time to establish the setting, the main characters and their key relationships. Before you could identify with their sense of loss, or fear for their safety, you had to know who they were. (Even Sergio Leone, who wasn't making Westerns so much as remaking them as opera, let you spend time with the Man with No Name—and glimpse his soft spots—before thrusting him into the feud between the Baxters and the Rojos.)

In The Salvation, by contrast, Levring has barely introduced us to Jon Jensen before the man loses everything. We don't feel the loss as we would if we'd met him even a few weeks earlier, preparing for his family's arrival, anticipating their future life together. The townspeople's behavior doesn't feel like a betrayal, because we've never seen them treat Jensen as a neighbor. Indeed, the first time we see Jensen in Black Creek, he's already made himself the town's enemy by killing Delarue's brother. No doubt Levring and his co-writer thought they were being efficient and "spare" in their storytelling, but sometimes a narrative gets cut down by too much. The Salvation is a good example.

Still, The Salvation improves as it goes along, thanks to Mikkelsen's haunted features and Green's intense gaze. By the end, though, it feels less like a Western than a bleak film noir—with horses.

The Salvation Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Salvation was shot digitally by Levring's usual cinematographer, Jens Schlosser (on the Ari Alexa Plus, according to IMDb). Post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, from which MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced by direct digital transfer. (The Region B Blu-ray released earlier this year in France was encoded as 1080/50i; the site review can be found here.)

The image has been heavily manipulated in post-production to create a painterly, historical appearance, with deep, saturated earth tones that dominate the daytime scenes and an overcranked contrast that gives the night scenes an almost hallucinatory quality. However, these are obvious stylistic choice by the filmmakers, and the Blu-ray cannot be faulted for reproducing them accurately. Levring's meticulous construction of the American West, part period re-creation, part storybook daydream à la Sergio Leone, swirls in tiny detail through every frame down to the last particle of dust and drop of blood. If the image occasionally looks too digital for one's taste, as it sometimes did for mine, blame it on the limitations of modern digital photography, which hasn't yet caught up to the textures and romance of 35mm film (though it's getting there).

Black levels are generally quite good, though a touch inconsistent, because of the varying levels of contrast. Unlike the French release, MPI's version occupies a BD-50, which allows the average bitrate to come in just under 35 Mbps. For digitally acquired material, that is luxurious.

The Salvation Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Salvation has an impressively atmospheric 5.1 sound mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, that constantly reminds the viewer of the windswept wildness of the landscape where Jon Jensen battles the savagery of his enemies. Even as Jon and his brother await the train's arrival in the opening scenes, the wind whips around them, and it recurs throughout the film. Horses galloping, stage coach wheels turning, gun shots, ropes, spurs, the creak of boots on wooden floors—all the classic sounds associated with the genre can be heard distinctly and with purpose on The Salvation's soundtrack. Most of the dialogue is spoken in English, and it is clear and well-placed. A small amount of dialogue is in subtitled Danish. The score by Danish composer Kasper Winding is a convincing pastiche of Western and mariachi music, both heavy on mournful guitars.

As is typical on MPI releases, an alternate PCM 2.0 soundtrack is available.

The Salvation Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Region B-locked edition of The Salvation released in France in January 2015 (reviewed here) contained no extras. MPI has included several informative extras with this edition, which is marked as being locked for Region A.

• Interviews (1080p; 1.78:1; 45:54): The interviews are not separately selectable. Questions are shown as intertitles, and many of the same questions are put to all of the interview subjects.
• Mads Mikkelsen ("Jon Jensen")
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan ("Delarue")
• Douglas Henshall ("Sheriff Mallick")
• Eva Green ("Madelaine")
• Nanna Øland Fabricius ("Marie Jensen")
• Anders Thomas Jensen (co-writer)



• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 7:13): This is a series of short promotional spots edited together. Each focuses on a different element of the film. Titles are listed below.
• Childhood Dream
• Guns
• Horseriding
• Man with Cigar
• Building the City
• Western Genre



• Trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 2:22).



• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Camp X-Ray, The Lovers, Match and October Gale, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Salvation Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Throughout the interviews included with this Blu-ray edition, people are asked about the multi-national nature of the cast and crew for The Salvation. They typically respond (and justly so) that the American West was settled by a melting pot of nationalities and ethnicities. No one found it odd when Sergio Leone took a combined cast of U.S. and Italian actors to Spain to make his "spaghetti" Westerns. It's just as acceptable for Levring to mix U.S., British, Danish, Scottish and Corsican actors in Johannesburg to create a "herring" Western. Whether other Danish directors will follow his example remains to be seen. Everyone interviewed talks about how making a Western was the fulfillment of a childhood dream, which leads one to suspect that there are others who would jump at the same chance. Just remember to write a first act next time. The Blu-ray is solid; decide for yourself about the film.