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38A 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.
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30Regardless 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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30To 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.
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30Quickly curdles into a nasty variation of the one-last-score genre.
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30Yet 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.
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30This 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."
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30Far too slick and manufactured to claim street credibility.
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25All 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.
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20A 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.
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20Taking 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.
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20Let'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.