The Salton Sea: Critic Reviews

Lovable absurdity is the saving grace of a drug movie, and on the rare occasion that this genre works, the head trip winds up being a worthwhile journey.

Too slick and manufactured to claim street credibility.

If there's no art here, it's still a good yarn -- which is nothing to sneeze at these days.

Eccentric enough to stave off doldrums, Caruso's self-conscious debut is also eminently forgettable.

Repellent yet intriguing, brutal yet funny, wicked yet strangely compassionate, The Salton Sea is more about mixing genres and styles than illuminating a credible reality.

By and large this is Mr. Kilmer's movie, and it's his strongest performance since The Doors.

For what it is, it's well-done -- a stylized-beyond-reality derivation of Natural Born Killers, perhaps. Or a more gonzo version of Go or Blow. But the heart has been stylized out of it.

I liked it because it was so endlessly, grotesquely, inventive.

Sacrificing content for style, Caruso gives us a lot to look at but little to ponder.

Director D. J. Caruso brings a visual flair to the proceedings, and Tony Gayton ... shows a deft appreciation of the genre, as The Salton Sea twists, turns and twists again.

A thriller with an edge -- which is to say that it doesn't follow the stale, standard, connect-the-dots storyline which has become commonplace in movies that explore the seamy underbelly of the criminal world.

The overall voyage on The Salton Sea is an uneasy one hampered by a confusing story that admits out loud it doesn't know where it's going.

interesting

Com boas atuacoes de Kilmer e D'Onofrio, o filme tem um roteiro razoavel, mas sem foco. Salva-se gracas ao interessante personagem principal.

Marked by an ambitious style and solid performances, but hampered by a story that buries its primary focus until late in the game.

Is authenticity too much to ask? It's not as if the various drug subcultures don't have enough humor and tragedy built in that you need to take a detour into Fantasyland.

It's a sort of rollercoaster ride through the salvaged wreckage of a hundred similar movies.

Lo lamento, pero este mar no me atrapo como para creerle mucho. Una cinta mas, regular y nunca tan buena como el director quiere hacerla parecer, presuntuosa y pasajera...

The result is mesmerizing -- filled with menace and squalor.

...[Vincent D'Onofrio's] almost insanely entertaining performance essentially takes the film to an entirely different level...

There's something fundamental missing from this story: something or someone to care about.

While it's all happening, it's entertaining enough, but when it's finished (in a disappointingly conventional manner), it doesn't seem to have been about very much.

It turns out to be just another inane druggie thriller with a revenge plot.

By getting myself wrapped up in the visuals and eccentricities of many of the characters, I found myself confused when it came time to get to the heart of the movie.

Overall, this examination of manufactured corruption set against a film noirish swagger may not have the in-depth impact like contemporaries L.A. Confidential or Memento, but this Sea is certainly worth swimming in