Load of rubbish!!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

So, I decided to watch Sal because I was looking for gay themed films and this one popped up. Big mistake, it dramatizes the last day of his life but the key word is drama, why not put something interesting for us to hold our attention? Speaking of attention, I was so bored by the 30 minute mark that I ended up surfing the web and I am sure I missed nothing important For a film about the last day of an American icon, they should've taken some dramatic license or something. It really made me feel like I was REALLY watching someone's last day, bogged mundane and all the minutiae. In other words, I can't finish this film anymore than I finished the 3 rd and 4th season of In The House...it was just too painful for me to continue watching, it's boredom level is Prometheus...and that movie was flippin' boring!

Sal is the depiction of the final 24 hours of 1950's teen idol Sal Mineo.It features Val Lauren in the title role and it was directed by James Franco.Sal Mineo is a talented actor that appeals to teen-agers during the 50's.He was an Academy Award nominee and was known for his roles such as Exodus and two of the three James Dean films,Rebel Without Cause and Giant.Later in his career,he has become open about his homosexuality and tried to find his identity both as an actor and a director.He found positive reviews as bisexual burglar in his stage performance in a play entitled," P.S. Your Cat Is Dead".But one day after returning home from a rehearsal,he was stabbed to death.Lauren did a great job in his portrayal of Mineo.Too bad that we are left basically to only the last 24 hours of his life rather than a portrayal of his life and legacy in Hollywood.Too bad that Sal should have been treated better rather than just featuring his last day on earth where nothing is essentially told except his death in the finale.Overall,a better story could have been told.

As a fan of Sal Mineo and James Franco I was looking forward to this film. With a short running time I began to worry as the 30 minute mark was approaching and I was not getting into it.This movie has parts similar to "The Brown Bunny" that terrible movie consisting of filming a driver wandering aimlessly and then ending with a surprisingly graphic unrelated sex scene. Only "Sal" omitted the surprise since of course the movie tells you at the very beginning how he dies. If you like Terrence Malick movies (I don't) with a dose of "Investigative Reports" you may enjoy it. If you are a fan of Sal Mineo you won't. The kind-of epilogue regarding the arrest of the killer seemed like an afterthought.Franco said his intent was to capture the mundane typical activities of someone on the last day of their life without them knowing it is their last day. That doesn't make for an interesting movie. I suppose if the character was fictional and the death at the end was a shocking out-of-nowhere surprise it could be entertaining, like a "Twilight Zone" episode. But Sal Mineo was a real person and we know already that he was murdered in a pointless random act.The tediousness of the opening workout scene (as appealing as a shirtless Val Lauren is), the smoking scenes, and the severely close-up conversation scenes, just dragged on and on. Even the play rehearsal scene was tedious and didn't tell us anything. I wanted to know who were the important people in Sal's life? Who were his friends? Did he have a relationship? Maybe he really was a has-been actor desperately trying to convince friends to fill the seats of his off-off-off-Broadway play. But I was hoping for more. The copy-paste of real Sal's "Rebel" Oscar-nominated performance upped the contrast of what this movie could have been.

I love James Franco & know how talented he is as an actor & now in art as well. I heard he had begun directing so when I saw his movie "SAL" up for viewing I dug right in; not knowing much about Sal Mineo I thought this could be fascinating. Boy was I wrong...and I mean BIG time wrong. This movie looks like something a pack of High-School film club wannabes attempted to make over their Summer break. No make that over their Christmas break.The movies cinematography, if you can call a single light and one very shaky hand-held camera being filmed by some drunk pulled off the street entertainment, was actually boring and just totally substandard. The incessant & tedious closeups of the actors face, nose or eyes while doing some of the most mundane activities like the minutes long scenes of him smoking or driving were simply awful. No art form, no intrigue, no nothing. Any hope for cleverness remained nonexistent.Music & sound were other factors that were flimsily handled as if they really didn't matter because all the closeups of the actors nose meant so much more. The overall flabbiness and lack of tension made this 90 minutes particularly painful. The inconsistent tenor of the sound throughout was choppy and uneven while sounding especially tinny, as if hastily grabbed from some stack of tunes noted from long ago. Were those scratches I heard? Now the acting was particularly amateurish, calling upon memories of plays attempted when we were all of 14, cocky & convinced of our immense talents. I search for descriptives to somehow get across just how terrible this film is and I come up frustrated and empty...kind of like the movie itself. This is no experimental art film folks, it is simply a rotten flick for which you will kick yourself for spending the time and money. MISS IT!