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Salton Sea, The
Warner Bros.

Salton Sea, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 41 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.2 out of 10
based on 30 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 22 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for strong violence, drug use, language and some sexuality

Starring Val Kilmer, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Goldberg, Luis Guzmán, Doug Hutchison, Anthony LaPaglia, Peter Sarsgaard, and Deborah Unger

After witnessing the murder of his wife, a man (Kilmer) goes undercover to avenge her death.


GENRE(S): Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Tony Gayton  
DIRECTED BY: D.J. Caruso  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: September 10, 2002 
Video: September 10, 2002 
Theatrical: April 26, 2002 
RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

80
New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson
As a gallery of the grotesque, however, the cinematic equivalent of a Joe Coleman painting or Adam Parfrey publication, The Salton Sea is a blast.
Read Full Review
75
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Strikes out toward freakishly original territory after all. Fans of the off-beat, your movie has arrived.
Read Full Review
75
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
A twisty, showy, atmosphere-saturated drama that revels (in a post-post-Tarantino-and-''Trainspotting'' way) in sadism and in-your-face seediness -- and attracts a cast of coolios primed to play extreme.
Read Full Review
75
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A slick, stylish hardboiled caper filtered through a druggy haze and borrowing a bit of a "Memento" revenge motif and "Pulp Fiction" playfulness.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It contains one element of startling originality: its bad guy, nicknamed Pooh-Bear and played by Vincent D'Onofrio in a great weird demented giggle of a performance; imagine a Batman villain cycled through the hallucinations of "Requiem for a Dream."
Read Full Review
75
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Unlike in many thrillers, the movie doesn't sandbag us with one last, cheap twist at the end. The Salton Sea contains its share of surprises, but none of them feels forced or artificial.
Read Full Review
70
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
It's Vincent D'Onofrio as Pooh-Bear, a drug lord who's snorted so much meth his nose had to be replaced by a plastic one, who kicks ass.
Read Full Review
67
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
For all its faults, is a solid piece of dirty work.
Read Full Review
63
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Might be thought of as "Memento" for people who didn't get "Memento."
63
Boston Globe Sam Allis
A commercial Hollywood movie without pretensions. If there's no art here, it's still a good yarn - which is nothing to sneeze at these days.
Read Full Review
50
LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
The Salton Sea isn't without interest or ideas, though some of the better ones are cribbed from David Fincher and, especially, Martin Scorsese.
Read Full Review
50
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
This is a thoroughly conventional story of one man's search for redemption in the neon slime; its multiple flashback structure is just a way of parceling out information, not a device used to undermine the narrative.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
Sacrificing content for style, Caruso gives us a lot to look at but little to ponder.
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50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Ray Conlogue
It uses violence as a drug, injecting it into the audience and hoping to addict it. Once the dependence is created, it is simple to feed it with formulaic films.
Read Full Review
50
Washington Post Hank Stuever
Adheres to the whacked notion that Hollywood does drugs so the rest of us don't have to.
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50
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The more the picture reveals, the less interesting it gets, transforming its hero from an intriguing mystery man into a standard-issue screen vigilante -- and steadily upping the violence, complete with harrowing torture scenes, in a lame effort to keep our juices flowing.
Read Full Review
42
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The cumulative effect of the movie is repulsive and depressing.
Read Full Review
40
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Eccentric enough to stave off doldrums, Caruso's self-conscious debut is also eminently forgettable.
Read Full Review
40
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
It's been a month since I attended a preview, and I'm more grateful than sorry that I no longer remember it well. Drug thrillers and revenge plots bore me.
Read Full Review
38
New York Post Lou Lumenick
A truly baffling late entry in the "Pulp Fiction" sweepstakes that ends up drowning in its own pretensions -- along with, quite possibly, what's left of Val Kilmer's movie career.
Read Full Review
30
Variety Robert Koehler
This extremely plot-thickened tale finally offers little more than the usual genre elements pushed to the kind of extremes that recall the acrid "The Way of the Gun."
Read Full Review
30
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Far too slick and manufactured to claim street credibility.
Read Full Review
30
Salon.com Charles Taylor
To say that the film is unpleasant would imply that there's an emotional reaction to be gotten from it. I'd have to believe that there was someone, somewhere, who would actually care.
Read Full Review
30
Film Threat Patrick Starkey
Regardless of the poison of choice, I'm always a little miffed when an actor onscreen is supposedly on a specific drug but too lazy to learn what the actual side-effects are.
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30
Time Richard Schickel
Yet how can one possibly recommend The Salton Sea? If it could, this nasty film would make you smell the disgusting food on the table. And that says nothing about its casual sadism.
30
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Quickly curdles into a nasty variation of the one-last-score genre.
Read Full Review
25
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
All the movie's narrative gymnastics can't disguise the fact that it's inauthentic at its core and that its story just isn't worth telling.
Read Full Review
20
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
A grimy mess set among L.A.'s speed-abusing "tweakers," Salton has neither the substance to justify first-time feature director D.J. Caruso's pretentious flourishes, nor the skill to make those flourishes work on their own terms.
Read Full Review
20
Slate David Edelstein
Let's just say that in spite of its malignant sun-scorched palette, absurdist visions, and narrative loop the loops, the picture looks in hindsight like the same old vigilante crap.
Read Full Review
20
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Taking issue with efforts like The Salton Sea, cold and unemotional films that couldn't be more pleased at the opportunity to enthusiastically drag audiences through unhappy material, is as futile as getting mad at the wind.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 22 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Rich R. gave it a0:
Five minutes into this was five minutes too long. Pure, anti-social crap.

Ana W. gave it a 10:
I loved the way Val Kilmer tones down the ego for this role. Vincent D'Onofrio is nothing short of amazing as he is in EVEYTHING he does!

Tyler T. gave it a 10:
..Pooh Bear..one of the most origional characters ever created Vince D is a genious.

Matt W. gave it an 8:
A combination of a number of films, but with some memorable characters (e.g. Pooh-Bear) and memorable scenes. If you focus on that and not the reality you'll enjoy the ride.

Phil M. gave it a 10:
Finally a good movie that "hater" will despite to their core.

Doug M. gave it a 10:
I think this film is a NewWorld type flick that leaves the "haters" so angry that a real movie finally came out that recognizes other lifes that people live and there importance and meanings.

Ryan M. gave it a 0:
About the biggest zero of a movie you could fathom. It's got absolutely no plot acceleration, and the whole thing feels like it just woke up from a hangover.

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