The Salton Sea (2002) Stylistic Tweaker Neo Noir

Directed by D.J. Caruso. Written by Tony Gayton. 

Beautiful Noir Style Cinematography by Amir Mokri, Music by Thomas Newman.

The film stars Val Kilmer (Kill me Again, Tombstone) as Danny Parker/Tom Van Allen, Vincent D'Onofrio (Full Metal Jacket) as Holland Dale "Pooh-Bear" Monty, Adam Goldberg (Saving Private Ryan, Zodiac) as Kujo, Luis Guzmán (Boogie Nights, Carlito's Way ) as Quincy, Doug Hutchison as Gus Morgan, Anthony LaPaglia as Al Garcetti, Glenn Plummer as Bobby, Peter Sarsgaard as Jimmy the Finn, Deborah Kara Unger as Colette Vaughn, Chandra West as Liz Van Allen.

Val Kilmer as Danny Parker/Tom Van Allen

Vincent D'Onofrio as Holland Dale "Pooh-Bear" Monty

Chandra West as Liz Van Allen

Peter Sarsgaard as Jimmy the Finn

Deborah Kara Unger as Colette Vaughn

Doug Hutchison as Gus Morgan

Adam Goldberg as Kujo

Glenn Plummer as Bobby

Anthony LaPaglia as Al Garcetti

 Luis Guzmán as Quincy

With B.D. Wong as Bubba, R. Lee Ermey as Verne Plummer, Shalom Harlow as Nancy, Shirley Knight (Sweet Bird of Youth, The Outsider TV film, ) as Nancy Plummer, Michael Lee Aday as Bo, Danny Trejo as Little Bill, Josh Todd as Big Bill. 

Story

A mournful trumpet peals a dirge. The Salton Sea. 

This was an ancient riverbed of the Colorado River. It either flowed where it is now or through the Imperial Valley. It also sits on the San Andreas Fault which may explain why it shifted back and forth. Anyway it's a salt water lake. It last went completely dry almost 450 years ago. 

They dug an irrigation canal from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley in 1904. A flood took out the head gates and probably tore up parts of the canal because they couldn't control the flow. It ran full flow for two years and refilled the old salt lake to record levels. In the 1950s and 60s there were even a bunch of beach resorts popping up around it. Heavy rain storms flooded some of them as the lake continued to fill.

The Salton Sea was in Classic Noir Highway Dragnet (1954) with Richard Conte, Joan Bennett, and Wanda Hendricks. Conte is a soldier who gets framed for a murder in Vegas and he's on the run. Bennett is a Bunny Yeager type fashion / cheesecake photographer traveling to a desert resort for a shoot with her model Hendrix. It all ends up at a surrealistic half flooded beach resort on the Salton Sea.

So we are hearing a dirge, seeing the title and this segues into a high angle shot looking down on a man sitting on the floor strewn with bricks of rubber band wrapped cash blowing a trumpet in in his burning flop. It reminded me immediately of the opening of  Twilight Zone's "A passage For Trumpet.

The trumpet player on the floor is Tom Van Allen. He seems unconcerned that the money is turning black. He's letting it burn. "All Halloween orange and chimney red" as Tom Waits would say, playing his own funeral dirge.

Hear we get the start of the Tom Van Allen's Voice Over telling us that he's not only Tom Van Allen but also Danny Parker. He runs through a litany of lofty personas ending more realistically with trumpet player and speed freak. But first, he tells us, he'll fill us in on the world of the tweaker.

Here, we get a  Black & White news reel like sequence explaining how methamphetamine came into being. 

Methedrine was first distilled by a Japanese scientist before WWII. The government distributed it to their forces during the war. 

Here we see marching soldiers and a kamikaze "tweaker" dive bombing a US warship

After the war before a government crackdown the use spread across the US invading all of society from housewives to truckers (Transitional Noir Death In Small Doses with a tweaking Chuck Connors) to presidents.

Chuck Connors tweaking in Death In Small Doses

Now illegal, it went underground and there are industrial quality labs to homemade Rube Goldberg trailer trash setups out in the boonies across the country. 

 We get a sequence that demonstrates the quirks and risks involved. 

Mass quantities of cold medicine

trailer meth lab set up 

, Copper tubing, Duct tape, pvc piping, garden hoses, etc., etc,

Cooking

The cook

Outside it looks like a quaint, peaceful. Yuletide decorated, trailer tucked in the boonies. The decoration consisting of a single string of lights outlining the door and a plastic window Santa. 

Things go haywire and it all goes boom.

The cook gets the blown out door and sprints partially afire. He hits the ground as a secondary explosion engulfs what's left.

We cut to a meth house and we get a survey of the place and if's inhabitants. while Danny Parker is now V.O. narrating. We finally stop at a heavily tattooed man with his back to us. 

Danny / Tom: So that's where I found myself. No, I should choose my words more wisely. This is the world I sought out. The land of the perpetual night party. Day swallowing night and night swallowing day. The crank compressing time like some divine piston on its awesome downstroke. We've been at this for three days... or is it four? Tweakers, lokers, slammers, coming and going, swearing eternal allegiance and undying love for one another, only to wake up after the binge and realize you wouldn't walk across the street to piss on one of them if their head was on fire. Three days. Or is it four? I know what you're thinking, but don't give up on me just yet. Just wait 'til I've told my whole story. And keep your eyes open. Nothing is as it seems.

When the meth runs out Danny and Jimmy The Fin go to a guy Jimmy knows to score some eight balls (an eighth ounce).  

They end up at the flop of a dealer named Bobby. Bobby lives with his old lady which he has sandwiched between a box spring and a mattress.

Bobby pulls out a speargun and waves it around menacingly. When Danny rhymes Bobby with Hobby he clams down long enough for them to score.

Later that night back at the meth house everyone is merrily tweaking away except Danny. He's drinking a beer. 

We cut to Danny at a pay phone.

He called some undercover cops Gus Morgan and Al Garcetti. They show up in an unmarked car.

He rats out Bobby. He gives them all the details, the dealer, the location, the occupants, making sure to emphasize there was a child in the apartment, and finally the weapons he saw. 

The next day Danny is in the crowd of onlookers. Bobby is laying dead on a sidewalk. The blood from his wounds has flowed down the storm sewer. Boddy's old lady and the child look down from a balcony.

We cut to a bit tipsy Danny stumbling along on his way back to his flop somewhere near the old downtown of the City of Angels. 

When he finally climbs up to his landing he sees a woman, his new next door neighbor struggling with a grocery bag and her keys, with the bag dropping to the floor and spilling its contents.

Danny offers to help but the woman refuses, just kicking the groceries into her apartment. Then goes in and slams the door. There's still a double roll of paper towels, a bottle.

Danny walks over picks up the her stuff and knocks on the door. Explains he's got her stuff. He tells her he's Danny and lives across the hall she apologizes for being rude and tells him her name is Collette. 

Cut to Danny pulling off a T shirt revealing a large tattoo. Its of a dark shadowy figure hovering over a golden sunset over water with "The Salton Sea" spelled out below. 

We see a pile of Danny's rings. Danny takes off his necklace and removes a wedding ring which he slips onto his ring finger. We then see Danny in the shower, the green colored hair gel goes down the drain. We are witnessing a transformation. 

Cut to a closet. Danny pulling down a small locked chest. He opens it and it contains his real identity. His clothes. His shoes. His drivers license, Thomas Van Allen, with an insurance check for $250,000, and his trumpet case. 

We next see Thomas dressed in his signature attire. the jacket, pants, and straw hat, as he opens the trumpet case there's a photo of Liz his wife taped to the inside of the top. He runs his hand over the trumpet.

Tom / Danny: My name is Tom van Allen, a trumpet player. 

Tom brings up the trumpet and puts it to his lips. He leans against a wall blowing a mournful tune. 

Here we start a flash back to Liz his wife, and we fade to a vision of a happy Liz bathed in a golden sunset. 

Thomas and his wife Liz are at a deserted beach watching a sunset along the Salton Sea. Tom is playing as the sun sets. When Thomas suggests that they get ready to leave, Liz wants to spend the night on the beach. Thomas says OK. 

It all goes Noirsville when the next day they get lost trying to get back to the highway and they stop at a place asking for directions. 

While there Tom asks if he could use their bathroom and while he is in there some type of raid is conducted upon the place by two masked men with machine guns and Tom is wounded and his wife is killed. 

The only trace of the killers was a red hair found on his wife's body and a connection he makes with a red haired man he remembers seeing the day before at a Salton Sea gas station. It's from remembering the ring that the red haired man wore, that Tom was able to trace the man to the L.A.P.D. Sheriff's office. 

Noirsville

homage to Sam Fuller

This is a beautifully directed and lensed Neo Noir, that needs to be better well known. This is how it's done. I do not know if the Director D.J. Caruso, and the cinematographer Amir Mokri ever collaborated again in another Noir or not, but we all should check out their filmographys. 

All the actors are great, Kilmer carries it well, Vincent D'Onofrio's portrayal of Poo Bear has a weird Slim Pickins vibe, too. It's a visual and aural treat 9/10.