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#563 - Slow West
John MacLean, 2015
A young Scotsman travels to America in search of the woman he loves and teams up with an Irish bounty hunter to find her.
Given its incredibly simple storyline, I do wonder how much chance Slow West had of being genuinely great as opposed to just good. The tale follows a naive young Scotsman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who travels from Scotland to America's Wild West in search of the woman (Caren Pistorius) he loves, who has emigrated for reasons that become clear soon enough. His journey doesn't last long before he is ambushed by a group of ex-soldiers hunting a Native American; fortunately, he is saved by by a laconic Irish bounty hunter (Michael Fassbender) who is clearly a lot more experienced when it comes to dealing with the local dangers. As a result, Smit-McPhee then decides to hire Fassbender as his bodyguard to help see him safely towards his destination in the west, which is complicated by the fact that Fassbender is secretly hunting Pistorius, who has a large bounty on her head due to the actions that forced her to leave Scotland in the first place. Throw in the fact that Fassbender's former gang (led by Ben Mendehlson) is following the lead duo in the hopes of them leading them to the bounty in question and there is sufficient complexity to pack out the film's extremely lean running time...
...or not. Slow West becomes more or less dependent on its episodic structure, building its strength less through crafting an organically developed whole than through a number of strong scenes. The earliest example of this is a scene in which Fassbender and Smit-McPhee visit a general store in the middle of nowhere that ends up going south extremely quickly. Other scenes, such as Smit-McPhee's solo encounter with a German writer or a minor character recounting the tale of his time with a young outlaw trying to make a name for himself, the film is definitely better at building singularly satisfying sequences than a completely satisfying film. This is a little unsurprising considering that this is writer-director MacLean's feature-length debut after working in short films, so the film really does play out like a series of vignettes. Some of them are good vignettes, but some of them aren't. The sporadic use of voice-over involving Fassbender's character feels awfully redundant for the most part, and the interplay he has with Smit-McPhee is decent without being spectacular (with the occasional high point, such as one scene where the former shaves the latter's face with one especially large knife). The film can be considered a black comedy due to the direction that some scenes take, but it's not liable to generate any major laughs nor does it justify the jaunty acoustic score that plays through much of the film.
Even so, Slow West is not without its good points. The cinematography is pretty strong, especially during the film's extremely bright and impressive third act that makes good use of complementary colours as it sets yellow fields against blue skies. The performances are generally decent, with the cast selling a generally nonplussed demeanour when it comes to witnessing some of the absurd circumstances that come their way. Fassbender and Smit-McPhee in particular do well at this as they give off airs of seen-it-all weariness and dumbfounded shock respectively. Though the film definitely lives up to its title by taking its time to progress through its eighty-four minutes, it's definitely got enough going on to feel at least a little worthwhile, but unfortunately the film's few strengths aren't enough to make it a modern classic. It's an entertaining enough modern Western where the flaws may prevent it from becoming a modern classic but that doesn't stop it being too difficult to enjoy.
John MacLean, 2015
A young Scotsman travels to America in search of the woman he loves and teams up with an Irish bounty hunter to find her.
Given its incredibly simple storyline, I do wonder how much chance Slow West had of being genuinely great as opposed to just good. The tale follows a naive young Scotsman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who travels from Scotland to America's Wild West in search of the woman (Caren Pistorius) he loves, who has emigrated for reasons that become clear soon enough. His journey doesn't last long before he is ambushed by a group of ex-soldiers hunting a Native American; fortunately, he is saved by by a laconic Irish bounty hunter (Michael Fassbender) who is clearly a lot more experienced when it comes to dealing with the local dangers. As a result, Smit-McPhee then decides to hire Fassbender as his bodyguard to help see him safely towards his destination in the west, which is complicated by the fact that Fassbender is secretly hunting Pistorius, who has a large bounty on her head due to the actions that forced her to leave Scotland in the first place. Throw in the fact that Fassbender's former gang (led by Ben Mendehlson) is following the lead duo in the hopes of them leading them to the bounty in question and there is sufficient complexity to pack out the film's extremely lean running time...
...or not. Slow West becomes more or less dependent on its episodic structure, building its strength less through crafting an organically developed whole than through a number of strong scenes. The earliest example of this is a scene in which Fassbender and Smit-McPhee visit a general store in the middle of nowhere that ends up going south extremely quickly. Other scenes, such as Smit-McPhee's solo encounter with a German writer or a minor character recounting the tale of his time with a young outlaw trying to make a name for himself, the film is definitely better at building singularly satisfying sequences than a completely satisfying film. This is a little unsurprising considering that this is writer-director MacLean's feature-length debut after working in short films, so the film really does play out like a series of vignettes. Some of them are good vignettes, but some of them aren't. The sporadic use of voice-over involving Fassbender's character feels awfully redundant for the most part, and the interplay he has with Smit-McPhee is decent without being spectacular (with the occasional high point, such as one scene where the former shaves the latter's face with one especially large knife). The film can be considered a black comedy due to the direction that some scenes take, but it's not liable to generate any major laughs nor does it justify the jaunty acoustic score that plays through much of the film.
Even so, Slow West is not without its good points. The cinematography is pretty strong, especially during the film's extremely bright and impressive third act that makes good use of complementary colours as it sets yellow fields against blue skies. The performances are generally decent, with the cast selling a generally nonplussed demeanour when it comes to witnessing some of the absurd circumstances that come their way. Fassbender and Smit-McPhee in particular do well at this as they give off airs of seen-it-all weariness and dumbfounded shock respectively. Though the film definitely lives up to its title by taking its time to progress through its eighty-four minutes, it's definitely got enough going on to feel at least a little worthwhile, but unfortunately the film's few strengths aren't enough to make it a modern classic. It's an entertaining enough modern Western where the flaws may prevent it from becoming a modern classic but that doesn't stop it being too difficult to enjoy.