Six years after his last movie, Kristian Levring returns as director and writer for "The Salvation". Not only did he get assistance from Anders Thomas Jensen, who worked on the Foreign Language Academy Award winning Haevnen, but the star of the movie is probably Denmark's most known actor these days: Mads Mikkelsen. The result is a quality western film. Yes it is predictable (as most other westerns including many of the classics), but that takes away nothing from it's magnificence. I had a wonderful 90 minutes at the theater watching this.
The story can be summarized quickly. The family of the main character gets killed early on. Now we did not get a revenge story that lasts for the whole movie, but Mikkelsen's character (a former soldier) kills those responsibly right away. Overkill even, but it was somehow funny how he kept pushing bullets into the killer's corpse. Sadly, one of the guys he shoots is the brother of the übervillain who terrorizes a whole town.
One thing I really liked here, was the Casino Royale reunion between Mikkelsen and Green (and even some of the visual effects people). Those two have great chemistry. The villains are played by Javier-Bardem lookalike Jeffrey Dean Morgan, former soccer infant terrible Eric Cantona and some others who may not look as primary antagonists to Mikkelsen's character here, but somehow can be classified as these as well. If you have seen some of his other work, you will know how great of an actor Mikkelsen is. He delivered during the scenes when he was mourning for his wife, son and brother, but looking at the whole thing, he is possibly even too good for the role he got to play here. Not too long ago, he starred in another revenge movie ("Michael Kohlhaas"), and here he is back to his best. A great choice for a guys' movie night, or for girls who like westerns and don't mind very graphic violence.
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