SLOW WEST Trailer

As a child, I loved the old Westerns. In fact, I was named after a particular cowboy played by the great Alan Ladd. There was a lovely romance that existed between those with honor and those without in the Wild West. These weren’t good guys, these were men who rode the dusty trail to perdition. The legends they left behind are as amazing today as the fairytales of yore. A cowboy may not be Heracles or Odysseus but they face their suffering as true warriors. Oftentimes, they are alone and bleeding out with barely an utterance of complaint. If you ask them if they’re alright, expect their response to be something along the lines of “yup”. Sadly, this has nothing to do with this trailer I’m about to show you, Slow West.

This dying genre film is directed by John Maclean and stars Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Now, as the story goes, a boy travels across this great country called America, for the purposes of holding hands with his sweetheart. On his way to his lady love, he attracts the attention of an outlaw who wants to kindly serve as a guide. And, as with many Westerns, bullets are involved though all the bad guys can’t shoot straight.

Moving on to the discussion proper, I don’t want to see no lovey dovey romance (said with great disdain) in Westerns. Shallow love stories flood the film narrative scene. There is rarely a love story that captures the essence of true relational romance. Thus, don’t try. Let’s focus on that outlaw/guide we know nothing about. His archetype is what Westerns should and have always focused on, the loner with a mysterious past. If he follows the standard, mister Guide is trying to find redemption in the form of helping that boy.

For lack of a better description, many of the scenes seem so bare. Not to say all the scenes are bare. Notice Smith-McPhee’s character going through what looks like a smoky campsite with his horse. There’s a mini-story being told through the set dressing. It’s as if this campsite was raided and burned, but many questions linger. For many of the other scenes, the focus is on the character’s particular actions or dialogue at the time. It’s not bad but it feels uncommon for many movies. Primarily, I refer to the bare-bones wooden house that looks way too clean. Due to the lack of set dressing, our eyes focus on the actor and their actions or words. Mighty decent. One of the scenes has a girl reading a book by candlelight in the daytime. Nothing is outstanding besides the girl hence focus is put on her and on what she could be feeling in this apparent solitude.

Gunplay is interesting here because it’s almost as if it they’re treating it like a joke. When Fassbender’s character is laying down with his back against the house, some guy standing next to him fumbles with a gun trying to shoot him. Instead of being competent, this random yahoo gets shot himself. Fassbender even laughs because he has the same realization that I did. Another example is the trickshot on the weather vane that has no other point than showing off. Guns even have magical powers here. The boy uses it to light up a star in the sky during that scene when he stares up into space. He didn’t even pull the trigger.

Slow West comes to the U.K. June 26th 2015 and has already made its rounds in the U.S. For a list of other release dates, click here.

Tell us your thoughts! Better yet, what’s your favorite Western?

(top image source: A24 Films)