Darkly comic samurai spaghetti western: Tornado reviewed

Spectator

a day ago

Tornado is a samurai spaghetti western starring Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Takehiro Hira (among others). Samurai spaghetti westerns aren't anything new. In fact, we wouldn't have spaghetti westerns if it weren't for the samurai genre – Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars (1964) was, as Clint Eastwood conceded, an 'obvious rip-off'* of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) – yet this may be the first one set in 1790 and filmed in Scotland. It may also be the first one to feature thick woollens and tweed. That makes it sound twee which it isn't. It's a super-bloody revenge story filmed in just 25 days with a running time of 90 minutes. We love a 90-minute film, so I feel bad saying this, but it does feel as if it needed more time to cook.
It comes flying out the gate flying, opening mid-chase with an adolescent girl (played by Koki, a famous Japanese singer-songwriter and model) running from the gang of outlaws who are on her trail. The outlaws are led by Sugarman (Roth) who would slit your throat at the drop of a hat. (The endless violence is darkly comic; expect chopped off limbs and geysers of spurting blood.) He has a resentful son, Little Sugar (Lowden), while the other woollen- and tweed-clad gang members have Guy Ritchie-esque names like Kitten (Rory McCann) or Squid Lips (Jack Morris). This is the sort of film Tom Hardy should be in but isn't. The gang pursue the girl through the forest into a mansion where she hides. What has she done? Questions are answered with a jump back in time to events earlier that day. (It turns out the opening 20 minutes come from the middle section of the story. We're doing middle, back, then forwards. I think chronological storytelling may well be over. I blame Christopher Nolan).
The Japanese girl is not the Japanese girl with no name. She is called Tornado, and she and her father (Hira) are travelling puppeteers with a marionette act that stages samurai combat. It's an impoverished existence, not to her liking. She is bored and resists her father's attempt to teach her Japanese culture, honour and sword skills. Teenagers: when have they ever realised how boring they are? She wants a way out so when she crosses paths with Sugarman's gang she steals their bag of gold. She is not given to making good decisions, this wee lassie.
She runs; they chase, and if you are awaiting a big twist, it doesn't come. It is light on story as well as dialogue. Thankfully, characters arrive fully formed in the hands of actors like Roth. Joanne Whalley pops up at one point and even though she only has two or three lines max, her character is fully formed. Koki, meanwhile, delivers a strong performance but Tornado may well be underwritten. Why is she so oblivious to the rising body count caused by her actions? Come the final act, which effectively turns into a superhero origins story, it turns out that she was listening to her father all along. We are meant to be rooting for her but I'm not sure I ever was. I wanted a lot more Kitten, as well as a conflict that wasn't solved by lopping someone's arm off.
That said, the film is assured. It has a terrific soundtrack by Jed Kurzel, which is all pounding percussion and jagged strings with hints of Morricone, while the cinematography by Robbie Ryan delivers a beautiful yet bleak landscape beset by shimmering lochs.
* When Fistful of Dollars was released Kurosawa wrote to Leone: 'It is a very fine film but it is my film… you must pay me.' He was awarded 15 per cent of all revenue.