'Tornado' is a whirlwind of Leone and Kurosawa
John Maclean's first film since 'Slow West' thrills and unnerves
I never say it. And it bugs me when other people say a movie should have been a TV show, or vice versa. And I certainly admire John Maclean’s lean, poetic, bloody Western thriller “Tornado” coming in at under 90 minutes.
But I would certainly love to spend more time in this world, with these people. Maclean, who last made the contemplative art-Western “Slow West” a decade ago, has filled “Tornado” with all sorts of interesting, unpredictable characters I’d love to know a lot more about. Not that many of them survive to the end.
I call “Tornado” a Western, even though it’s neither set in the American West nor during the frontier days. Instead, it’s 1790, somewhere in the British Isles (the bleakly beautiful landscapes of Maclean’s native Scotland serve as an unforgettable scene partner to the actors).
Tornado (Koki) is a teenage British-Japanese girl who has been dragged along by her father Fujin (Takehiro Hira of “Shogun,” wry and majestic) across the countryside. Fujin was trained as a samurai, but now uses his skills to put on puppet shows and pantomime plays for the locals. He also tries to teach his daughter the ways of the samurai, but in the time-honored tradition of teenage daughters throughout history, she thinks he’s lame and boring.
The screenplay by MacLean and Kate Leys jumps back and forth in time as it shows how father and daughter run afoul of a ruthless band of brigands, led by the cold-eyed Sugarman (Tim Roth). The film starts in mid-pursuit, so it’s a little while before the film backtracks and reveals why Sugarman is after Tornado.
But we’re immediately gripped by the chase, by the intense near-wordless performances of the actors, by the terrible beauty of the landscape, and by the ominous score by Jed Wurtzel. Even with some missing pieces of the narrative yet to be filled in, we sense in our bones that these are dangerous men in a pitiless place where violence and betrayal are commonplace. Sugarman slashes the throat of one of his confederates as casually as if he were cuffing him behind the ear. And his son, Little Sugar (Jack Lowden), may somehow even be more of a threat to Tornado, as he schemes to use her against his father.
“Tornado” keeps us off-balance. Some characters who we expect to survive, don’t, and others who we expect to do the right thing, won’t. Even Tornado, our ostensible heroine of the story, gets into her predicament through a series of selfish and foolish decisions.
At the end, when she finally decides to stop running, face her mistakes and use her samurai skills against her pursuers, it’s a thrilling climax that’s part Sergio Leone and part Akira Kurosawa.
At a movie a decade, Maclean clearly works at his own pace. But I would love to see Tornado unsheathe her bushido blade again soon.
“Tornado” is now in theaters. In Madison, it’s playing at AMC Fitchburg 18.