Cinema Reviews

The Salvation Review

• 20th Apr 2015

Jon is a Danish settler in the old west, who after years apart, has his family (wife and young son) join him and his brother. Sadly the carriage ride home is interrupted when the other two passengers decide to start taking liberties with his wife.

Madds Mikkleson continues to deliver powerful, albeit quiet, performances and he continues here is in this Danish-American Western about a man finding himself on the wrong end of society after his family is brutally murdered and he takes his swift revenge. It isn’t long until relations of the men who wronged him are upon him and his brother.

Mikkleson is the epitome of typecasting for this role. But whilst his performance is as engaging as ever, the political intrigue of the small town in the American west – and quiet what people are prepared to do for money and land weaves an interesting backdrop to events as they unfurl.

Race, Sex and culture certainly play a pivitol role for the main characters, but there are many others in the background behaving not quite how you might expect them – all in the name of greed, anger and even fear.

The Salvation is an intense film that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Steven Hurst