Rating: R | Runtime: 101 minutes
Release Date: May 2nd, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Grindstone Entertainment Group / Lionsgate
Director(s): Björn Franklin & Johnny Marchetta
Writer(s): Björn Franklin

You know, you can be smart and still be proud.

Sal (Toby Kebbell) is trying. He’s been trying for a while. To stay afloat financially by working as a senior caretaker. To stay connected to his roots by boxing as a journeyman for younger fighters to beat. To be a better father for his teenage daughter Molly (Kíla Lord Cassidy). It’s all a little too late in the sense that it feels like he’s just banging his head against the wall, but you must admire the fact that he keeps trying anyway. Because he owns his mistakes. He’s not asking for forgiveness as much as a second chance to prove he’s changed. Still changing. The thing he’s never learned, however, is that patience trumps impulse.

At least, that’s what I think he’s never learned. For all its poignant beats and resonant drama, Björn Franklin (who also writes) & Johnny Marchetta’s Salvable throws us into Sal’s life so abruptly that we never really know what’s going on beyond the surface emotions. That’s not to say they aren’t enough to invest in the character and his journey. Just that everything around him becomes an obstacle to overcome or a goal to achieve. Can he get out of his own way to be the man he needs to be so Molly stays in his life? Is his old running mate just out of prison (Shia LaBeouf’s Vince) the answer or a curse? Are they all just excuses for him to continue pissing everything away?

It’s a collision course destined for tragedy because the hard work Sal has put in to finally be exactly what Molly needs is happening right when the allure of a quick fix to his financial straits arrives. Father figure and coach Welly (James Cosmo) desperately seeks to keep him on course via tough love, but it’s impossible to deny the promise of fun and reward Vince is selling. There’s a bit of an unspoken quid pro quo too—as if Sal might have been on the road to prison too if not for Vince taking the heat instead, but I’m not sure. What happens at the end kind of refutes this notion by proving Vince truly loves Sal like a brother, but I won’t deny the film plays it like he’s using him up until that point.

I chalk it up to the superficiality of the script that I mentioned above. The plot and exposition are so thin that I ultimately needed to create my own backstory from the few exchanges we see on-screen. Because the only flashback we get is of the two as young teens readying for the Olympics. The crimes they committed and the reason for Vince’s incarceration are never explained, so I filled in the blanks. And I did the same for Sal’s relationship with Molly and his ex (Elaine Cassidy, Kíla Lord’s real-life mother). We get more detail about this trio at least. Enough to understand the strain and buy the two heartfelt exchanges between father and daughter that show a thaw remains possible.

Those two scenes are very good. Molly witnessing Sal in a moment of vulnerability at his work that allows her to let her defenses down and Sal realizing at her school how the life that prevented him from being a good dad prepared him to understand how to tell Molly everything is going to be okay. Salvable is always at its best when Kebbell and the younger Cassidy are together. It’s always its most authentic and meaningful. Because their relationship is the one that still has a future. Welly, Vince, and Elaine are figures of his past—good, bad, and ugly. Sal must forgive himself, put them all behind him, and realize he has time to be there for Molly. Not as a role model, but maybe a cautionary tale.

As such, the decision to take things where they go feels intentionally traumatic. And because the script’s final day starts with only fifteen or so minutes left, I knew Sal’s plans must inevitably go wrong. I braced myself for it. But there just isn’t enough time. We receive a rushed, artificially tense montage of a climax where the love for Sal by everyone else pours out in each character’s own way en route to a conclusion that still cannot penetrate its surface emotions for true stakes beyond the music cues. The bones are there for us to fill in the blanks again, and it is an enjoyable ride (Kebbell is great), but we never find that deeper connection. It’s a story ripe for abstract lyricism told via linear literalism. Exciting potential undercut by familiar execution.

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[L-R] Toby Kebbell as “Sal” and Shia LaBeouf as “Vince” in the action crime thriller SALVABLE, a Lionsgate release. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.