The Salton Sea is an interesting film. It is a film that looks initially to be about drugs and the people who take them. Val Kilmer is in the lead role as a tweaker of crystal meth, and other substances, as well as a quite good sounding trumpet player. He begins by telling the viewer, via narration, explaining that he does not know who he really is and asks you to decide as we wind back through a recent period of his life to see how he came to where we first meet him.
The movie gets its title from a key event to the film occurred at the Salton Sea and Kilmer's character has a huge tattoo in memory of this.
What unravels is an intricate mystery that holds the viewers' attention but only just. The story is quite good but it is not in your face as one might expect a film of this acting calibre. It sunk at the cinema but maybe due to its art-house feel and advertising did not communicate this.
Vincent D'Onofrio is nearly unrecognizably as unpredictable drug dealer Pooh Bear, named as such because of his flat nose, and Danny Trejo is here as one of his scary henchmen.
If you are looking for a decent mystery, darkish thriller, some noir, drugs, love lost, and cops, then you could not go far wrong renting The Salton Sea.
