Michael
Shannon stars as the CEO of a high-profile company responsible for a
catastrophic ecological disaster.
Veronica Ferres is an ecologist sent to access the damage. Since Shannon is clearly nuts, he kidnaps her
and a series of mind games between the two escalate.
Ferres’
plan is to get Shannon talking. The
thought is, the more he talks the more he'll let his guard down. Fortunately for the audience, he talks a lot. Shannon has a way with writer/director Werner Herzog’s
dialogue. He nicely captures the
quizzical nature and eccentric rhythms of Herzog’s speech while very much
keeping the character uniquely Shannon. Whether he’s talking about broken down trains
or pontificating on parrots, he really keeps your attention with his offbeat performance.
If
only the narrative wasn’t so frustrating.
The first half in which Ferres is taken hostage is much stronger than
the second. It’s here where she is
forced to play mother hen to a duo of blind boys and help them make their way
through a seemingly endless salt flat.
Sure, this sequence is filled with some glorious looking cinematic
compositions, but it also happens to be extremely heavy-handed, contrived, and
ultimately boring.
In
fact, the whole thing more or less falls apart once Shannon disappears. Without his oddball charisma, Salt and Fire
fails to generate much interest. Ferres
does what she can, but she just isn’t engaging enough to make the Shannon-less
passages work. You know you’re in
trouble when her most memorable scene comes from waiting for her luggage at the
airport.
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