For the first thirty minutes of this movie, you will be sitting there thinking you're watching the start of a five-star masterpiece, as everything on screen is beyond spectacular. Salvo (Saleh Bakri) is a personal body guard and assassin for the mafia, and in the opening scene, someone attempts to kill his employer. Hunting the would-be killer down, he tracks down the man who organised the hit, but instead of finding him, runs into his blind sister Rita (Sara Serraiocco).
Up until this point, the film has had some peerless cinematography, reminiscent of some of the best work we've seen in Alfonso Cuaron movies with its long, complicated takes. Then the movie switches perspectives from Salvo to Rita, and it picks up some riveting sound design, as she makes her way around herself, unable to see but sensing and occasionally hearing someone in her home.
However, once this absolute astonishing opening sequence comes to an end, everything begins to fall apart. The cliched issue of a hitman with a heart of gold, a killer who is essentially a good man and just needs to love of a good woman, is not a new one, but there is room for an interesting new take on it. Which is not something that Salvo manages to do.
Throughout, the performances from Bakri and Serraicocco are consistently fantastic, but unfortunately, once the opening thirty minutes are up, the following hour plus of the movie are nothing but compounding dullness and confusing plot-turns. Eventually things look like they’re going to take a turn for the better for the eventual action-packed climax...which never arrives.
Technically astounding, great acting, but with a potentially killer plot, Salvo proves to be filled with potential, but eventually we discover that isn't enough. We'd almost recommend you buy the ticket just to enjoy the breathtakingly bravura opening salvo (see what we did there?), and don't make the same mistake we did by sitting through the rest of it.
