Once upon a time, the Fridays just pre- and post- summer were the time to open star-powered pictures with moderate budgets and decent scripts, but as the summer movie season oozes out into the year like Home Run Pie-fueled love handles, it becomes harder and harder to know what to expect during fringe months like April and May. The Salton Sea cuts into a slick trailer and that’s about it. And, like a trailer, it’s nothing more than a series of interesting visuals and moments with no overall structure or logic.
The film begins promisingly with the doomed end, like a noir that knows how to play the game. Danny Parker (Val Kilmer) soulfully blows his trumpet while the room behind him goes up in flames. Parker, a classically detached narrator, asks the audience to solve his identity problem and backs up the story. Living in that movie world where meth fiends are more interesting than normal folks, Danny splits his time between binges and turning in his dealers to two cops. As the tale progresses we learn that it’s all an elaborate ruse for Danny to find the men who murdered his wife. Even though it sounds intriguing, it is all for nothing.
As much potential as this picture has, it wastes it all on a jumbled narrative that follows one predictable straight line through the intrigue and insanity of its crank-addled world. This flick could have benefited from the Witness factor – an average genre piece can rise above its brothers when set in a world that we haven’t seen. The world of meth labs and tweakers is ripe for the noir treatment, but The Salton Sea’s story is so poorly constructed that the scenery might be interesting, but the ride is lame.
Flashes of Guy Ritchie-esque fun shine through, such as in a crank-fantasy heist sequence with a ’70s-style title shot and a targeted score of Bob Hope’s stool sample. But like most of the film it’s simply an indulgence to quirky characters, built with gags lifted from other pictures rather than part of the story. The film feels like the work of someone who took a film noir class but slept through most of the screenings and never did any of the readings.
For more evidence towards the poor film student theory, there are direct quotes from Psycho‘s shower sequence and Dirty Harry, both with the protagonist on the wrong side of the homage and used for no other reason other than an inability to create anything original. The voiceover even complains “What a cliché” at one point, in a failed attempt at irony. Like Swordfish, The Salton Sea comes off even lamer by reminding us of much better films and giving off a “been there done that” attitude without the knowledge that comes with experience.
The Salton Sea is one of those movies that is more enjoyable to think about than to watch. It’s filled with great actors playing neat characters, but those characters have nothing to do. Any picture that wastes the awesome talents of Luis Guzman and Vincent D’Onofrio is a crime. D’Onofrio does his Oldman best to make a bad picture worth watching for a fun, over-the-top villain. Even with as many great bits as he has, including a missing nose thanks to an out of control snorting habit and recreating the JFK’s visit to Dallas with pigeons, it’s all for naught.
Special mention should be made of the only good thing to come out of this film, which will hopefully be more recognition for Peter Sarsgaard (Boys Don’t Cry). As Parker’s none too bright best friend, Sarsgaard brings out a sad humanity in his strung out character who has finally found something in life to like. The moment when he thanks Parker for not laughing at him when he doesn’t know what JFK stands for is so genuine that it makes up for a lot of the other missteps the film takes.
Missteps may not be the right word. The film never missteps, or at least our main character never missteps. Parker goes straight from Point A to Point B without ever being lost or unsure. Noir is dependent on the main character being lost along with the audience. Lacking the trapped feeling and double crosses of noir, with the straight ahead plotting of a Lundgren revenge actioner, this picture is straight to video fodder buoyed to the surface of a theatrical April release by Kilmer’s fading star. The Salton Sea has all the makings of a stylish suspense thriller, just without all the suspense, style and thrills.
