Scottish writer-director Tom Nicoll announces himself as a talent to reckon with in a debut feature that works as a sly, incisive corrective to various less subtle manosphere studies.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Lane Films Our first impression of Danny Carlton, the callow protagonist of “Salvation,” is that he doesn’t look like a man you’d trust with your life. He’s young, but that’s not the issue. It’s more the palpable air of uncertainty around him, evident in his shallow, darting gaze, his chummy but hesitant speech, his slightly gormless affect; he seems a nice enough lad, eager and solidly gym-built, but you wouldn’t readily hand him any greater responsibility than mowing your lawn. Appearances, of course, can be deceiving, but the great, growing sadness of Tom Nicoll‘s remarkable character study is that, in this case, they’re not. Danny is going nowhere, and just about everyone but him seems to know it, including his mentor and peers on the cockamamie life-coaching course that he thinks will finally make something of him.
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