Director: John Maclean

Stars: Kôki, Takehiro Hara, Rory Maclean, Jack Lowden, Tim Roth

Set somewhere in Britain in the in late 18th century, writer-director (and founding member of the Beta Band) John McLean’s follow up to his revisionist Western ‘Slow West’, is a frustratingly unfocused affair. It begins with a sequence in which a young Japanese woman, followed by a young boy, is being chased through fields by a gang. She is Tornado (model songwriter Kôki), the daughter of samurai turned travelling puppet show performer Fujin (Shogun’s Hira). Tornado must hide in a house while the gang ransack it in search of her. The band is led by Sugarman (Roth) who inspires loyalty mainly through vicious threats. In the gang are Sugarman’s broodingly rebellious son, Little Sugar (Lowden) and the hulking heavy Kitten (Game of Thrones’ Maclean). The story flashes back to earlier that day when villagers are watching Fujin’s samurai puppet show, which foreshadows events to come, and Sugarman’s gang’s gold is stolen while they are distracted. Robbie Ryan’s gritty overcast photography keenly evokes a sense of place, and there is a palpable sense of times changing as Roth’s character becomes aware that there is no place for him in this increasingly civilized world, and is determined to make the most of it. Maclean draws on elements of samurai and spaghetti westerns, along with some Peckinpah-style bloodletting, which, alas, is not as much fun as that sounds, mainly due to sluggish pacing and some undercooked performances as Lowden, Koki and Hara fight a losing battle with sketchy characterisation. Roth at least brings a bit of energy, and pathos even, as the fearsome but rueful Sugar.