Tornado

With a blistering score and a darkly comic undercurrent, Tornado is a timeless revenge thriller filled with hurt and heart.

Scottish director John Maclean’s ambitious second feature is an intriguing blend of Western and samurai actioner — always close bedfellows — which makes the most of its untamed setting.

Despite considerable thrills throughout, Maclean’s writing makes it seem as though his characters never actually existed in their world before the film started.

The film does a serviceable job of creating a revenge story, but leaves some meat on the bone in terms of narrative and visuals. Scenes come to a standstill and make a very short movie drag in places it shouldn’t. That being said, the final showdown makes it all worth it.

The pure strangeness of the movie commands attention and there is a charismatic lead performance by Japanese actor-musician Mitsuki Kimura, or Kôki.

Tornado’s winking theatricality, thematic fixations with myth and avarice, and pared-down plotting add up to a heady concoction, but it’s more conducive to reflection than engagement.

Pleasant enough to look at but impossible to care about, this movie isn’t bad because it fails at what it sets out to do, but because of the most evil of all reasons: it never figures out its reason to be at all.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]