Slow West (2015)
Certified: 15
Duration: 84 minutes
Directed by: John Maclean
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorius, Rory McCann, Andrew Robertt
KRS Releasing Ltd

Slow West is a very different take on the Western genre. It is almost a Searchers for the modern generation, a beautiful neo-Western that brims with pose, intelligence and intensity.

John Maclean, who is here making his directorial debut, shows he is a force to be reckoned with. He is also involved in writing duties, and the combination of a well-honed script with great cinematography delivers kudos aplenty.

Kodi Smit-McPhee is Jay Cavendish, a young boy with royal blood running in his veins and who has journeyed to the American frontier to find the love of his life, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius). Through flashbacks the film shows how and why Rose and her father had left Scotland.

Jay has yet to taste the dangers and troubles of life, and the US frontier of the late 1800s is full of unwary danger. From the start he gets on the wrong end of the stick in a situation and he ends up needing help from Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender). Silas is his complete opposite, a man of the Wild West, who lives with the dangers that come with this new territory. He ends up joining Jay as his guide and also as a sort of bodyguard.

Jay does not know that Silas is in it because he is also a bounty hunter and Rose has a price tag on her. The film has a number of subplots: there is the love story Jay thinks he has with Rose; there is Jay’s awakening to the world outside his comfort zone and the test of his ideals; and the study in harsh and beautiful cinematic strokes of the new frontier and the way it affected the Native Americans.

The sense of danger and instability is very powerful

Throughout their journey, Jay and Silas end up in a variety of situations that will add shades to the trip they are on. This includes a violent encounter with a Swedish couple, an outlaw (Ben Mendelsohn) who will bring problems with him and encounters with Native Americans.

Shot in Middle Earth territory, i.e. New Zealand, Slow West is a gorgeous visual treat that takes all the staples of the genre and changes them to bring to the movie a sort of self-aware and out-of-time context. The audience is placed into what is familiar territory and yet there is a sense that something different will or can occur in every frame.

The sense of danger and instability that is packed into the ambience is very powerful, making the audience even more aware of how rough and difficult this environment is for Jay.

Smit-McPhee, the boy from Let Me In and The Road, delivers a performance that is tangible and his sense of naivety is felt throughout. The audience will embrace the way he starts to open up to the reality he is in.

Fassbender is the perfect conduit for Maclean’s intentions as, despite having only a few lines, he has a commanding screen presence.

Maclean knows his Westerns and he delivers the picture with a sense of melancholia not just for the times gone by, but even more so for the popular image we have of this genre and the sense of time and place in our subconscious fuelled by countless Hollywood and spaghetti Western movies.

In what is a dark-edged storyline meshed with a visual imagery that is cinematically colourful and stylish humour, it is no surprise that the ending is also unusual and counter-current to most Hollywood productions. It’s a film to dig deep into.