Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: John Maclean
Starring: Kōki, Tim Roth, Jack Lowden, Takehiro Hira
The samurai movie and the western are such natural cousins that Sergio
Leone and John Sturges were able to easily rework Akira
Kurosawa's Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai as A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven. Writer/director John MacLean has taken this
symbiotic East/West relationship one step further by dropping a samurai
into a western. And just to add an extra layer, his samurai western
plays out in the unlikely setting of 1790s Britain.
It's there that we find Fujin (Takehiro Hira), a retired samurai
who now travels the British isles with his teenage daughter Tornado
(Kōki). The duo make a living staging an elaborate puppet show in
which a pair of miniature samurai engage in a duel that makes the
domestic violence of Punch and Judy seem tame. This show is followed up
by a demonstration of Fujin and Tornado's own sword skills as they
perform a mock duel that ends with Tornado defeating her father and
issuing the Helen Reddy-esque proclamation "I am Tornado, remember my
name!"
And remember her name you most certainly will. In Tornado, MacLean
and Kōki have created one of the most distinctive action heroines
of recent times. At the start of the movie Tornado is a typical moapy
teenager, questioning her father's guidance, but by the end she's as
notable a samurai hero as any we've seen. It's hinted that Tornado was
either born in Britain or brought there at a young age, but either way
she considers herself more British than Japanese. The film gives us a
unique twist on the classic clash between an immigrant parent and their
naturalised child, with Kōki viewing Britain as her home while her
father is all too aware that at some point they'll have to draw swords
against the white man.
That moment comes when a gang of highwaymen stop by Fujin and Tornado's
show after robbing bags of gold from a church. When the gold is stolen
by a young urchin, Tornado decides to help the boy, hiding the gold in
her father's wagon. This leads to Tornado being hunted by the gang and
their sinister leader Sugarman (Tim Roth), whose son Little Sugar
(Jack Lowden) is secretly planning to betray his father and take
the loot for himself. Roth plays the part like the leader of a football
hooligan firm exercising control over a group of men twice his size who
are all too ready to inflict violence at the nod of his head.
It's taken MacLean a full decade to follow up his outstanding 2015
debut Slow West, where he first displayed his skills in the western genre. That movie
felt influenced by the intimate 1950s westerns of Anthony Mann and Budd
Boetticher, recalling the classic American western with its painterly
compositions and a 1.66:1 aspect ratio that emphasised height and depth
over width. For his second feature MacLean is very much drawing on the
iconography of the spaghetti western. He expands his frame to full
widescreen here to capture faces that are as rugged and wind beaten as
the harsh landscape they inhabit. Sugarman and his mob are introduced by
entering the frame from its edges, like Henry Fonda's gang in Once Upon a Time in the West. As with Slow West, composer Jed Kurzel once again provides a score that
pays homage to spaghetti westerns without coming off as cheaply
parodic.
This love of the western is combined with the aesthetic of the samurai
movie. MacLean gives us all the moments fans of that sub-genre expect,
with Tornado swearing vengeance while sheathing an inherited sword that
she will inevitably use to hack off the limbs of her foes. Though his
film is the definition of grim and gritty, MacLean isn't afraid to have
some fun with his combat scenes, with a great gag involving a pistol
fired by the twitching finger of a hand severed from its owner by
Tornado's blade.
As with Slow West, MacLean has once again crafted a western that's simultaneously sparse
in its storytelling yet loaded with small details that flesh out its
unique world. Despite the entire narrative playing out in a forest, a
mansion and a couple of fields, Tornado is deceptively epic in scope. It's a masterclass in low-budget
filmmaking. Sometimes all you need to make a movie is a girl and a
sword.
Tornado is in UK/ROI cinemas
from June 13th.
