Latest news with #JohnMaclean
New York Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Tornado' Review: She Wants Revenge
This crackling movie begins with what some might take for a bit of misdirection: a quotation from a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky, the father of the great filmmaker Andrei. 'I would readily pay with my life / For a safe place with constant warmth / Were it not that life's flying needle / Leads me on through the world like a thread.' Given that the movie concerns Tornado, a young swordswoman who has to make her way through a hostile British countryside after wastrels kill her father, one might wonder what Tarkovsky has to do with it. But first consider the statement rather than its origin. Tornado (Koki) has been touring with her samurai father (Takehiro Hira) through rural England, performing a charming puppet show. An initially prankish bit of business involving two sacks of stolen gold gets the duo in big trouble with a pack of thieves led by Sugarman (Tim Roth). The writer-director John Maclean, who deftly played with genre in his 2015 feature debut 'Slow West,' is similarly sure-handed here. The movie quickly establishes itself as a revenge narrative, and each bad guy goes down in a way designed to suit the viewer's justified bloodlust. In the title role, the singer-songwriter Koki is both charming and indomitable; when she announces 'I am Tornado,' you feel your internal applause sign light up. And Nathan Malone, who plays the little boy following Tornado as she eludes the bad guys, is reminiscent of the nervy star of Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Ivan's Childhood.'
Geek Tyrant
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Awesome Trailer for the Martial Arts Action Film TORNADO — GeekTyrant
There's an awesome-looking martial arts action movie coming out this weekend titled Tornado , and I don't know how I missed this! This movie looks like an insanely badass revenge story. The the film, Tornado vows to seek vengeance and forge her own destiny by stealing the gang's ill-gotten gold after her father's puppet Samurai show is ambushed by a notorious gang. The story is set in the rugged landscape of 1790s Britain, 'Tornado is a young and determined Japanese woman who finds herself caught in a perilous situation when she and her father's travelling puppet Samurai show crosses paths with a gang of ruthless criminals led by Sugarman, and his ambitious son Little Sugar. 'In an attempt to create a new life for herself, Tornado seizes the opportunity to take matters into her own hands and steal the gold from their most recent heist. With her father murdered by the gang and her life in grave danger, Tornado races against time to escape a violent demise and avenge her father's death.' The movie was written and directed by John Maclean and it stars Tim Roth, Jack Lowden, Takehiro Hira and Kōki. The movie is set to hit theaters on May 30, 2025.
BBC News
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Tornado: The wild west samurai movie set in 18th Century Scotland
Scottish filmmaker John Maclean has always loved 2015 debut film Slow West was still on the festival circuit when he sat down and began to write a new time, he wanted to set his story in Britain in 1790, drawing on characters who he felt had never been given screen time before: the outlaws, the musicians, the circus he was determined to add a samurai element. "At the time I had immersed myself in Japanese cinema," he says."I had seen and loved some of Kurosawa's films but decided to watch his entire work in order and read every book analysing his technique and storytelling style in order to analyse the to-and-fro between the American western and the samurai film."The result is Tornado, a British period drama and a coming of age story. Filmed on location in the Pentland Hills in January 2023, it stars Japanese actress Kōki as the eponymous Tornado, a performer in a travelling circus who learns to use a sword for the show, but by the end of the film is wielding it to the tender age of 22, she has many talents: catwalk model, musician, composer and actor. But she'd never been asked to use a samurai sword before."I was completely new to it so I contacted an action team in Japan and started to learn before shooting," she says."It was a completely new experience, the way you use your muscles, your posture, the mindset." Takehiro Hira plays her father – and the character who teaches her to use the samurai sword. He was impressed by her skills."She was always practising off-set, and posting photos on Instagram," he recently appeared in the FX series Shogun, which is the first Japanese language series to win an Emmy (18 of them).And he didn't doubt John Maclean's knowledge of the culture."I was so impressed with his knowledge of Japanese film," he says."Not just the obvious ones but some even I didn't know."When we first met on a Zoom call, he showed me a copy of my father Mikijirō Hira's debut film which I'd never seen." A founding member of the Beta Band, John Maclean started out making music promos with budgets ranging from zero to £70, 2009, he wrote his first short film, Man on a Motorcycle. It starred Michael Fassbender, who went on to appear in his next short film Pitch Black Heist and his first feature Slow having proved he could make a western, he wanted to see if he could transplant the genre to 18th Century Britain."1790s Britain felt like 1860s America," he says."It was wild and lawless, but things were changing. The law was coming, the industrial revolution was coming."And like the wild west, it's a multicultural mix and a fight for even a band of outlaws led by Sugarman, played by Tim Roth. "I remember coming in for the costume-fitting and what they were quietly doing was crossing time periods," he says."I was wearing things which could have been worn in the 1940s, but there were other elements which were maybe more in keeping with the 1790s. There was an extraordinary freedom in that."John Maclean agrees: "There wasn't that much recorded about these sorts of people then so if you do look up costumes from the 1790s, you get the powdered wigs and the breeks but we really have no idea what ordinary people wore."Takehiro Hira adjusted his traditional costumes for the Scottish weather."We had kimono costumes but not the kind I would wear in Japanese cinema," he says."This had a lot of pieces and I would wear it like a coat although it was meant to be worn like a scarf so we were improvising just as any ordinary person of the time would have done." Midgie season John Maclean says it was the tight-knit cast and crew, working on a low budget, which allowed his dream of a Scottish samurai western to at last become a reality."I was very fortunate to work with cast, crew, producers and financers that embraced the originality of the story. I think the only way we managed to shoot this in 25 days was the amount of preparation done."Kōki is an absolute star and there is nothing she cannot do, her acting skills matched by her fighting skills. Jack Lowden embraced the mantra 'there are no small parts'. Tim Roth, lying on the ground of a freezing Scottish forest delivered a performance which can be fully appreciated on a large cinema screen."For Roth, the freezing forest was a breeze compared to his experiences filming Rob Roy in 1995. "I know a lot of people think January in Scotland would be the worst time of year to shoot a film, but when we shot Rob Roy it was midgie season and I would take this over that any time. It's hard to explain just how awful it was, swarms of them, and unless you keep moving…"One of Roth's other films has an important place in John Maclean's heart."I worked at the Cameo cinema as a student. Tarantino came with Reservoir Dogs and I met him and talked to him and thought I could maybe be a director. "So to have Tim Roth in this film feels like coming full circle."Tornado is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on 23 May
The Guardian
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Tornado review – windswept samurai western set in apocalyptic Scotland
John Maclean's new movie is a dour, pessimistic, almost surrealistically downbeat revenge western set in Scotland in the late 18th century – but it could as well be happening in some post-apocalyptic landscape of the distant future or on another planet. This is the follow-up to his debut Slow West, and as with that film it is shot by Robbie Ryan with music by Jed Kurzel (director Justin's brother and collaborator). I have to admit, though, that this does not quite have the energy or the fluency of that previous film, perhaps not the same production resources either – and by comparison it is more strenuously contrived. Yet the pure strangeness of the movie commands attention and there is a charismatic lead performance by Japanese actor-musician Mitsuki Kimura, or Kôki. She plays a dancer called Tornado, who travels around what looks like utterly empty terrain with her impresario father Fujin (Takehiro Hira) in a covered wagon, putting on a samurai show. They perform with puppets, whose little lopped-off heads and limbs squirt out fake blood with tiny ingenious pumps; they also demonstrate samurai sword-twirling combat themselves. They appear to have once been part of a travelling circus encamped elsewhere. And who do they perform to? A crowd of people show up out of nowhere, having presumably walked many miles from the (unseen) villages where they live. Among this crowd is a sinister, motley gang of violent thieves led by Sugarman – a solidly uningratiating and menacing performance from Tim Roth – and his quasi-son (or perhaps actual son) Little Sugar (Jack Lowden), whom he bullies mercilessly. They are so diverted by Tornado's show that a little kid steals two bags of stolen gold at their feet, and so they set out on a brutal expedition to reclaim their loot and punish the kid, which leads into a violent confrontation with Tornado whose samurai skills and martial arts moves are not just for show. It really is a weird drama, made the weirder for a timeline-shuffling effect at the beginning for an episode that takes us to the local manor house, whose laird is played by Alex Macqueen. Many scenes are played out to the accompaniment of high, sometimes almost gale-force winds. And the gang themselves do not travel by horseback: they simply walk everywhere, a disturbing itinerant caravan of bandits on foot who never need to eat or sleep or take shelter. In some ways, they are the evil version of the travelling players whom they are pitted against and the confrontation has the quality of a peculiar lucid dream. It's a puzzle of a film in many ways, but it shows that Maclean has his own film-making language. Tornado screened at the Glasgow film festival and is in UK and Irish cinemas from 23 May.
