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 The Salton Sea (2002)
Rated: R for strong violence, drug use, language and some sexuality.
Runtime: 103 mins.
Director: D.J. Caruso
Writer: Tony Gayton
Tagline: If you're looking for the truth, you've come to the wrong place.
Cast: Val Kilmer, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Goldberg, Luis Guzman, Deborah Unger....complete cast
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Most memorable quote: "Don't take it personally. Garcetti hates everybody. He even hates dolphins"
Review by Frank Wilkins
Many movies have featured illegal drug use and the seedy underworld of crime and criminals, but few have presented the griminess with such flair and artistic style as The Salton Sea. Recent memory brings us Blow with its glitz and glamour of the cocaine lifestyle and Traffic that hammered away at the origins of the cocaine market. The Salton Sea is an edgy, neo-noir thriller with a warped sense of dark humor that pulls us deep into the decayed and rotten world of the bathtub crank users (call them tweakers if you're cool) and dealers of Southern California.
In a non-linear storytelling fashion, we learn that Thomas Van Allen (Val Kilmer), a trumpeter in a blues band, is now Danny Parker, an ink-covered meth dealer/user who is working with the cops as an informant. After a short narrative on the history of methadrine, that includes footage of tweaked-out Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII and an accusation that JFK experimented with the mysterious "energy shots" while in the White House, the movie actually opens at the end of the story as Danny, or is it Tom, plays his trumpet on the floor of a burning hotel room. And in a true film-noir fashion, he introduces himself by means of a gravel-mouthed voice-over. He asks us to decide who he is - avenging angel, judas' escariot, loving husband, prodigal son, prince of doom, trumpet player or speed freak. By the end of the movie, you'll know who he is - you'll know that at some point in his life he was each of these.
Writer Tony Gayton (Murder By Numbers) and director D.J. Caruso have a masterful sense of art and design and inject their stylistic visions into this otherwise depressing and downbeat world of freaks and tweaks. We are introduced to a colorful cast of characters from Danny's grungy tweaker friends with their incessant motion, 24-hour sleepless crank binges and bouts of mindless chatter to the fearfully lovable Pooh-bear (Vincent D'Onofrio) with his prosthetic nosepiece that covers the exposed nostrils of his surgically removed nose due to damage caused by relentless meth snorting.
The Salton Sea is about the characters. It examines the depths of their meth-tainted souls and brings us along for the ride in Danny's pledge to uncover the identity of his wife's killer. I found myself eerily entertained by one of the most interesting gathering of characters in quite some time - from Hobby Bobby (Glenn Plummer) with the harpoon who keeps his girlfriend under the mattress, to the residents of Pooh-Bear's ranch who reenact the JFK assassination with live pigeons in a remote-controlled car, to the rabid and starved badger, Captain Stuebing, that doubles as a lie detector by threatening to bite off the penis of liars.
The Salton Sea is a thorough piece of art that challenges us to examine the details and consider all the motives before presupposing anything, and at many times leaves us wondering if we should be laughing or gasping in horror. We gradually learn who Tom Van Allen is and how he relates to Danny and when the movie ends we know why Danny thinks that the easy way out is to die in a burning hotel room.
Frank Wilkins
Screen formats: Widescreen Anamorphic 1.85:1
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Closed Captioned.
Sound: English: Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1.
Other Features: Color; interactive menus; scene access; trailer; making-of-featurette; cast interviews; cast and crew information.
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Complete Cast:
| Val Kilmer .... |
Danny Parker/Tom Van Allen |
| Vincent D'Onofrio .... |
Pooh-Bear |
| Adam Goldberg .... |
Kujo |
| Luis Guzmán .... |
Quincy |
| Doug Hutchison .... |
Gus Morgan |
| Anthony LaPaglia .... |
Al Garcetti |
| Glenn Plummer |
Bobby |
| Peter Sarsgaard .... |
Jimmy the Finn |
| Deborah Unger .... |
Colette |
| Chandra West .... |
Liz |
| B.D. Wong .... |
Bubba |
| R. Lee Ermey .... |
Verne Plummer |
| Shalom Harlow .... |
Nancy |
| Shirley Knight .... |
Nancy Plummer |
| Meat Loaf .... |
Bo (as Michael Lee Aday) |
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