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‘Salvable’ Review: A Welsh Boxer Battles the Odds in Well-Crafted but Familiar Drama With Shia LaBeouf

Shia LeBeouf and James Cosmo are either helping or hindering Toby Kebbell’s hard-luck hero in English directorial duo Franklin & Marchetta’s debut.

Still, the narrative doom spiral falls short of the tragic grandeur it’s meant to have achieved by this point — because while “Salvable” is competently crafted and cast, its thematic elements aren’t developed enough to attain the depth required for that payoff. The actors’ variable stabs at a regional sound further muddy that identity, as does the decision to feature numerous tracks by very Irish singer-songwriter David Keenan, their working-class-hero gist conveyed by titles like “Guts” and “God Is a Magpie.” Nonetheless, the film does have atmosphere, thanks to Simon Plunket’s widescreen cinematography achieving an effect that’s handsome but not prettified, a pervasive bluish lighting cast conveying an uphill-struggle melancholy in wordless terms.

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