Salt and Fire
Director: Werner Herzog
Year Released: 2016
Rating: 1.0
A researcher (Veronica Ferres) and her associates (Volker Michalowski and Gael García Bernal) travel to Bolivia to report on a man-made ecological disaster, but they're kidnapped by a corrupt CEO (Michael Shannon) ... later on, she's stranded in the middle of the salt flats and has to tend to two nearly-blind children (!?). It wastes too much time in the beginning to get to its actual "story" and is then too skimpy with the details (we need to care about the environment: gotcha, Werner) - even the (few) Herzogian oddities (the disabled kids, the talking parrot, the champagne-in-a-wheelchair-for-the-aliens) add little zest. Peter Zeitlinger's photography is outstanding, but he's given a wonderfully desolate landscape to work with - Shannon struggles to make the most out of an underwritten villain.
