50
Salt and Fire is a doodle, suggesting an assemblage of ecological riffs and fantasias that Werner Herzog may have entertained while making Into the Inferno.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
42
Entertainment Weekly by Darren Franich
In Salt and Fire, a bad movie but an intriguing vacation slideshow, Michael Shannon and Veronica Ferres play “characters” (unconvincing, undimensional) and speak “dialogue” (expository, flat).
42
Salt and Fire is by no means the most willfully obtuse film that Herzog has ever made — it seems as broad as a blockbuster when compared to the likes of “The Wild Blue Yonder” and “Lessons of Darkness” — but it’s the only one of his works in which his curiosity has completely eclipsed his insight.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Described by Werner Herzog as “a daydream that doesn’t follow the rules of cinema,” Salt and Fire may be rule-breaking, but the result is one of the director’s least appealing adventures.
75
The Film Stage by Ethan Vestby
Salt and Fire may feel like a joke of sorts, it’s one attuned enough to a genuinely idiosyncratic sensibility to still register enough as a genuine search for something new.
60
For all his faults as a narrative film-maker, Herzog can at least be counted on to keep his non-documentary excursions unpredictable.
58
Perhaps the best that can be said of Salt and Fire is that its flaws are wholly Herzog’s. Those flaws are deep. But so is the man responsible for them.
38
Salt and Fire is an odd environmental thriller, a perhaps-promising project that attracted Michael Shannon and Gael Garcia Bernal to Bolivia to see what this mad genius would make of it. Not much, as it turns out.
58
Consequence of Sound by Sarah Kurchak
Fans of [Herzog's] unique style and humor will find much to enjoy in Salt and Fire, even if the film does lack some proper cohesion. Anyone who’s wavering in their critical affections, however, can easily use this as an example of what happens when a good artist buys into their own hype and mythology.
50
Screen International by Wendy Ide
It’s certainly a striking location for a story: a blinding white sun-baked blank slate on which anything can be written. It’s just a little unfortunate that the story Herzog chooses to tell is so frustratingly enigmatic and unformed.