Salt and Fire
XLrator Media | Release Date: April 7, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
44
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
12
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
We Got This CoveredDavid JamesApr 6, 2017
Audiences unfamiliar with Herzog will be largely baffled by this eccentric and meandering eco-drama, but aficionados will find much to enjoy here. Read full review
75
The Film StageEthan VestbyApr 4, 2017
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. Read full review
60
The GuardianNigel M SmithApr 4, 2017
For all his faults as a narrative film-maker, Herzog can at least be counted on to keep his non-documentary excursions unpredictable. Read full review
58
The PlaylistNoel MurrayApr 4, 2017
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. Read full review
58
ConsequenceSarah KurchakApr 4, 2017
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. Read full review
50
VarietyGuy LodgeApr 6, 2017
This most defiantly rule-resistant of filmmakers certainly hasn’t lost his capacity to surprise. Salt and Fire’s punchline, however, only enhances the sense of a shaggy-dog tale dashed off on the back of a postcard — it’s the scenery on the other side that holds our attention. Read full review
50
Village VoiceChris PackhamApr 6, 2017
Despite the bad acting, self-importance and general Herzogian ridiculousness, the director actually has a deep sense of beauty and a genuine talent for communicating humanity’s scale against immense natural forces and the absolute howling vastness of time. Read full review
50
Screen DailyWendy IdeApr 4, 2017
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. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChuck BowenApr 2, 2017
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. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichApr 5, 2017
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. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyDarren FranichApr 5, 2017
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). Read full review
40
CineVueBen NicholsonApr 6, 2017
Like much of his recent scripted work, it's a mannered affair that's vague and clumsy. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleApr 6, 2017
Like something you peer at rather than absorb, Salt and Fire is both awful and a tad fascinating. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungApr 4, 2017
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. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 30, 2017
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. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comNick AllenApr 7, 2017
Salt and Fire is fundamentally bad, in its filmmaking and expressiveness, whether there is any meaning to a parrot quoting Nostradamus or not. Read full review
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