Tornado (15)

Slow West director John Maclean’s new film is a stylish, and surrealistically downbeat revenge saga set in Scotland in the late 18th century.

You could look at Tornado as Scottish western; a lean, mean, rousing tale of revenge; except, its heritage equally comes from the East, namely the 16 year old Anglo-Japanese heroine ‘Tornado’ (Kōki), armed with a samurai sword.

She’s being pursued across desolate, windswept forest and plains by a criminal gang. Led by Sugarman (Tim Roth), the posse are hunting two sacks of gold that they themselves stole, which are now missing. And as much as they – correctly – identify Tornado as the culprit, they’re not above turning on one another for the plunder, chief schemer being Sugarman’s own resentful son, Little Sugar (Jack Lowden).  

Yet though the Georgian time period is evoked, so too are the aspects of Akira Kurosawa; and it’s also, really, a Spaghetti Western - a tale of bad men, gold and revenge. It’s an interesting puzzle of a film in many ways, yet the pure strangeness of it all commands attention, and shows that Maclean has his own distinct film-making language.