Salt and Fire

A Franco-American-German drama; A story about a scientist who blames the head of a large company for an ecological disaster in South America. But when a volcano begins to show signs of erupting, they must unite to avoid a disaster. This film has a theme about humans being changed by their environment. As early as a quarter of an hour in, it becomes apparent that the film was not made with care. Poor editing, shaky camera tracking, and a poor script with stilted dialogue that falters with tautology and redundancy. There are tangential conversations that lead nowhere and characters introduced that are left hanging; where there is focus on character exposition, it is ham-fisted. There are recondited descriptions and bumper-sticker philosophising like, "Truth is the only daughter of time." That said, it is an ambitious project with heart in its message, and Michael Shannon brings watchability, and the beautiful locales help while we ponder the director's message about pollution. As an aside, viewers who are familiar with the director's reputation as a pioneer of New German cinema will assume he got bogged down in his passion project because it is poor by his high standards.