Tornado director John Maclean: 'There aren't many samurai Westerns set in Britain'

Ten years after his sharp and impressive debut Slow West, a Michael Fassbender-starring Western, Scottish filmmaker (and member of The Beta Band) John Maclean has made a second film, Tornado, a period genre piece with a sparse, modern edge. 

What took so long?

“I finished [writing] Tornado maybe about 2017 or ’18, and it has just taken me that long to raise the money. It’s tough,” Maclean tells Big Issue. 

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“I didn’t get much support from the three places you would normally go: Film4, BBC and BFI. I managed to find producers that figured out different ways of getting this made. You’re still very dependent on who’s in films, less people are financing films or there’s more caution. That’s another huge challenge, getting someone in your film that will tick the financing boxes. It’s a miracle any films get made, really.”

But Maclean is no defeated artist: the finished Tornado is a gritty take on outsiders surviving in historical Britain, boasting an exciting, committed cast. Tornado combines Western and samurai influences in late 18th century Britain, following a band of bandits led by the gruff Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his protege Little Sugar (Jack Lowden) who are pursuing Tornado (Japanese singer Kōki), a young woman who stole their loot. Tornado must survive away from her travelling puppeteer father Fujin (Takehiro Hira) on the fringes of an inhospitable Britain.

“There’s not very many samurai Westerns set in Britain,” Maclean says. “I see period dramas come out again and again that seem to be remakes of things. It’s quite disheartening when you’re thinking of coming at it with a new angle, something perhaps more about outsiders and less about society.”

For all the film’s production pressures, Maclean feels a certain filmmaker solidarity. 

“I’m reading a book about Hollywood in the ’60s, films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde. They went through the same struggle. There were years of people turning them down and swapping directors. It’s always been difficult to make a film. You’re always asking for a lot of money. And then you add on top of that Covid, or lack of interest from the industry, then it just becomes even more difficult.”

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Roth and Lowden are crucial to the film’s quietly captivating tension: they play villains with unpredictable energy and venom. 

“The thing is, you need to find the generous actors, because this film is about a young girl. So, hats off to the generosity of Lowden and Tim Roth and Takahiro for just knowing that they’re part of a jigsaw,” says Maclean.

“Jack Lowden was leaning against a tree for days as I was shooting Kōki. I think you only get that generosity when people like the script, or people like Jack Lowden love Slow West. You need that love there because you know they’re not doing this for the Oscars. Tim Roth was chipping away at dialogue and trying to get the economy. He’s not a scene stealer. He just does his craft extremely well and only does things that that character will do.”

Because Westerns and samurai films belong to vivid and specific moments in history, they’re far more connected to social issues than other genres. “You’ve got the Westerns that dealt with McCarthy in America, you’ve got the Westerns that dealt with the Vietnam War. You can see all these things in it now. You can see the reflections of society in Westerns. When you look at [Akira] Kurosawa and samurai films, you can see his shift from doing Japanese propaganda and social realist films to doing stuff that are about being human,” says Maclean.

Watching Tornado, it creeps up on you how much the relationship between Fujin and Tornado, who is losing interest in her father’s rigid Japanese traditions, is mirrored by the father-son dynamic of the robbers. Maclean says that “wanting the parents to pass on their knowledge, but forgetting to pass on their love” was one of the main drivers for the story.

“We’re in 1790, the law hasn’t quite arrived yet, almost the equivalent to the 1860s in America, where the sword is becoming the gun. The truth of these characters is, in order to survive, they’re going to rob from the church, then subvert what’s right and wrong. Tornado is wrong to rob them. [Sugarman] runs a gang of misfits, people that are just looking for a father figure. You’re always trying to get something slightly truthful.”

Tornado is in cinemas now.

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