TORNADO

June 11, 2025

Jack Lowden, Joanne Whalley, John Maclean, Kôki, Tim Roth, Tornado

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. 

Jack Lowden, Joanne Whalley, John Maclean, Kôki, Tim Roth, Tornado
Norman Wilcox-Geissen/IFC Films

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…

Jack Lowden, Joanne Whalley, John Maclean, Kôki, Tim Roth, Tornado
Norman Wilcox-Geissen/IFC Films
Jack Lowden, Joanne Whalley, John Maclean, Kôki, Tim Roth, Tornado
Norman Wilcox-Geissen/IFC Films

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

TRENDING

bel powley, chanel, douglas booth, the sandman, young werther

BEL POWLEY & DOUGLAS BOOTH

They met when they were cast together, married seven years later, and now live in East London. Greg Williams takes…

havoc, tom hardy, jessie mei li, justin cornwell, gareth evans

HAVOC

Writer-director Gareth Evans tells Jane Crowther how Tom Hardy is ‘smashing up the screen’ in his tale of…

BUY

You may also like…

paolo sorrentino, the hand of god, gary oldman, celeste dalla porta

PAOLO SORRENTINO

Paolo Sorrentino, director of an as yet untitled love letter to his native city, heads back to Naples.

ISSUE 9 – 2025

Years ago – before Banshees or Saltburn – Barry Keoghan came to my studio and we started talking about photography…

super/man, ian bonhôte, peter ettedgui, christopher reeve, johnny carson, bill clinton

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY

Words by JANE CROWTHER Christopher Reeve’s children (from his relationships with Gae Exton and Dana Morosini) open the family scrapbook and video archives to search through their memories of their father that are so entwined with those of an international consciousness. The youngest, Will (now a US broadcaster) is bittersweetly cognizant to his own memory conformity