Words by JANE CROWTHER
Writer-director John Maclean follows off-beat Western Slow West with more genre-spliced fare – this time a Scottish oater/samurai actioner. In the blustery 1790 glens we meet a young Japanese woman (Kôki) running for her life across moors and through forests. In pursuit, a motley team: leader Sugarman (Tim Roth), his son Little (Jack Lowden) and a crew of desperate thieves and murderers who’ll slice the throat of a random circus performer as easily as a colleague who failed a mission. The Sugarman gang are looking for gold that they believe the girl knows the location of – and in a midsection flashback, we’ll discover if she is merely another pawn in their path of destruction or if she has skin in the game.
As the marauders trash a stately home, the wagon of the girl’s father (Takehiro Hira) and the camp of an acting troupe (led by Joanne Whalley), the woman at the centre of the story turns from quivering quarry to an avenging force, and Sugarman’s infantry start to drop. ‘Remember my name, Tornado…’ she intones darkly while wielding a blade. There will be blood – spurting out of slick throats and lopped-off limbs…
Roth can play this sort of casual menace in his sleep and his relaxed brutality towards his lads, his son and anyone in his path is chillingly effective. Lowden, playing off Roth’s energy, becomes a nasty piece of work, while Kôki manages to sell her arc from girl to goddess in a screenplay that asks for little sympathy for anyone. The characters all circumnavigate a boggy lake and damp woods as their morality play unwinds – like souls in purgatory, tethered to a place. Audiences will need to accept this conceit to get the most out of people constantly bumping into each other when there’s plenty of directions to run. But, welcome the dreamlike quality of proceedings (helped by beautiful lensing by Robbie Ryan of brackish waters, auburn grasslands and fairytale forests whipped by gale-force winds) and Maclean’s rain-lashed, dark fable will cast a spell. And make you yearn for a cosy blanket.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of IFC Films
Tornado is out in cinemas now
