Years after emigrating to America, Jon (Mads Mikkelsen), a Danish soldier haunted by his violent past, is at long last able to invite his family to join him. However, on their first day together after a long journey, they unfortunately share a stagecoach with a murderous traveler who almost instantly preys upon them. With both his wife and son dead, an enraged and grieving Jon exacts vengeance; the situation is complicated further when he learns the culprit was the brother of a bloodthirsty, tyrannical outlaw (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in the employ of a burgeoning oil company. The subsequent whirlwind of attempted retribution and reactionary brutality precipitates a high-noon siege which could shape the future of the entire town.

This Danish-produced, largely-English-language Western is so simple as to be elemental. Every component—the chiseled masculinity, the picturesque landscape, the nearly gravitational orbit of virtue and vice—is writ large in a way both self-aware and earnest. The film's storytelling is mostly beholden to formula, and the one significant deviation (a not-so-stealthy no-war-for-oil motif) is undernourished, but it is executed with estimable, even sumptuous artistry and elevated by an enigmatic international cast. Also on hand are the magnetic Eva Green (striking as always playing a mute widow) and Jonathan Pryce as a cowardly, shady mayor.

B

The Salvation

Great film. It's almost too perfect of a western (story, convention etc.). Mads plays to his strengths as a battle-hardened, pain-in-his-eyes, Clint Eastwood type of shooter. Eva Green is beautiful in a no-dialogue role. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the weakest link, and Cantona doesn't really get a chance to perform. The cinematography is good. I wish it had been a bit more violent than it was - while it shows that the west isn't a nice place (lives are worthless), it didn't show many of the killings, and I wish the killings of the final gang were a bit more isolated and given their own screen time. But on the whole it was a great film. I really appreciate most, if not all, modern westerns because there is such a dearth.

B+