The Salvation

The Salvation (15)

Denmark/UK/South Africa 2014  92 mins  Dir: Kristian Levring  Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Eric Cantona, Mikael Persbrandt, Douglas Henshall, Jonathan Pryce

You’re a Dane who wants to make a John Ford/Sergio Leone-style revenge western. Where do you go to find authentic Old West locations? Why, South Africa, obviously, capturing the heat and dust in the foreground and painting in Monument Valley in the background. The amazing thing is that it works. Dogme 95 co-founder Kristian Levring, who’s best known in this country for the intriguing The King Is Alive, reunites with busy writer Anders Thomas Jensen (whose A Second Chance was in UK cinemas only last month) for a handsomely staged, beautifully photographed film that gives all our favourite High Noon clichés a brisk, no-nonsense and highly satisfying workout. Elevating it above lumpen genre fodder are terrific performances by Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan masticates scenery with aplomb as the unspeakable bad guy in the black hat.

Danish soldier Jon (Mikkelsen) and his brother Peter (Persbrandt) fled for America in 1864, following the bruising war with Germany. After seven years, Jon has succeeded in building a new life, so he sends for his wife and young son. Barely have they stepped off the train in the lawless town of Black Creek than trouble rears its ugly head in the form of a pair of evil, leering, drunken wrong ‘uns. Jon is hurled at gunpoint from the stagecoach taking the family to their new homestead. His son is then killed and his wife raped and murdered. Catching up with the coach, our vengeance-crazed hero dispatches the scumbags with extreme prejudice. Alas, one of them turns out to be the brother of evil extortionist Delarue (Morgan), who runs the town. He gives ineffectual sheriff Mallick (Henshall) until (high) noon to find the perp or serve up a brace of townsfolk to be executed instead. Meanwhile, he loses no time in having his evil way with his late sibling’s wife – a disfigured, mute beauty known as the princess (Green).

Among the familiar faces in the supporting cast are Eric Cantona as one of Delarue’s goons and Jonathan Pryce as the devious mayor who has a lucrative sideline as town undertaker. But the film belongs to versatile Mikkelsen, giving his most tormented performance since The Hunt, with a side order of low cunning. You wouldn’t want to be a female character in a movie like this – which, to be fair, is more a reflection of the times in which it’s set than any misogyny on the part of the filmmakers – but Eva Green holds her own impressively in a wordless role and is at the centre of the most tense sequence. Naturally, we’re all itching for Morgan’s granny-killing rapist to get his comeuppance. Levring spares no brutality on the eventful journey to this showdown, concluding with a striking crane shot that reveals the root all of the bloodshed.