I love spaghetti westerns and so does the protagonist of Salt (Sal), a would-be screenwriter who must have the only cat in Spain named Clint. He has written a movie set in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth, but nobody else thinks it’s any good. When he decides to visit the Atacama to improve his script, he is mistaken by all the locals for someone else – the guy who had cuckolded the local crime boss. That first night in Chile, he is plunged into a real life shoot em up and is soon experiencing a story that Sergio Leone himself would have loved to film.
Much of the fun is in the fact that our hero has never shot a gun or been shot at, and he doesn’t take easily to either – he’s no Clint, for sure. Salt is filmed in the style of a modern-day spaghetti western and comes with its own spaghetti western score with jangly guitar and jarring harmonica. If you love A Fistful of Dollars, this is the movie for you. Even if you don’t love the spaghetti western, you’ll find this a satisfyingly funny movie.
I attended the North American premiere of Salt at Cinequest 22.
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