Tornado

Directed by John Maclean
Starring: Tim Roth, Jack Lowden, Takehiro Hira
Released 13 June
8/10

By the time they broke up in 2004, the Beta Band were reportedly over a million quid in debt to EMI. This was at least partly due to their cavalier habit of producing videos like the one for “Trouble”, a moody affair filmed by a frosty Scottish loch, starring Steve Mason as a kilted samurai ruthlessly and bloodily despatching the local laird and his family, with dialogue entirely in Gaelic.

The video was the work of John Maclean, keyboard player and resident auteur in the recently reactivated band, and something of its vibe continues in his second feature. Tornado is a headstrong teenager, touring the north of Britain in the 1790s with her father’s traveling puppet show. When she gets involved in an opportunistic heist, she finds herself fleeing a murderous band of brigands led by Tim Roth.

Like Maclean’s previous feature, Slow West, there’s a hefty amount of homage - in this case to Kurosawa, John Ford, Sergio Leone and Morricone. But Roth plays his part with blithe anachronism, like a dapper Millwall regular, leading his firm of archers, bruisers and thugs through Scottish woods and glens in remorseless pursuit of his stolen booty. It’s this insistence on a very multicultural 18th century - at one point Roth advises Tornado to “just go home”, and she calmly responds that she is home -  that saves the film from being one more blood soaked fanboy genre exercise. That, and the incredible central performance from Japanese model Kōki, playing a young girl maturing from wilful teen to ice cold instrument of destruction.