Tornado was clearly inevitable when your name is John Maclean. Wanting to take that die hard namesake, but clearly apply it to your triple loves of the Scottish Highlands, American West, and Samurai films, the only possible film that could come out of it was this one. That triple mash up helps Tornado stand out from other Western homages trying something new with beloved old genres mostly lost to time. And, come on, Tornado is just a kick ass name for a main character too.
But at the beginning we see Tornado (Koki) is just playing her part in her father Fujin’s (Takehiro Hira) traveling puppet show in the Scottish Highlands. But storm clouds are approaching. Both literally, but also metaphorically, as Tornado sees a boy (Nathan Malone) steal a sack of money from the Sugarman (Tim Roth) gang of highwaymen, clearly fresh off their latest score. Tornado could just do nothing, but instead sees her chance at a new life, and unfortunately, unleashes her namesake on this little countryside of stately manors and traveling carnivals.
We’ve gotten some glimpses of Western lore in the Highlands, but never quite made a whole movie out of it. The setting is fantastic for Tornado, as we have giant Lachs, small heavily treed forests, beautiful rolling hills, and epic flat plains with all those other terrains surrounding it. The movie makes us feel like we’ve traveled thousands of miles during this epic cat and mouse pursuit. We don’t need a lot of talking, because of the natural beauties surrounding us, as well as some of the manmade ones too. Each scene is set with the most beautiful backdrop imaginable, helping elevate the stakes of the story when maybe the story couldn’t do it itself.
The other fun part of Tornado is it’s genre mishmashing. If you’ve seen even one Western or one samurai film, you’ll recognize the beats of the movie instantly. But instead of a settler’s town or rural Japanese community, we have Scottish estates to hide in and have the bandits harass butlers or carnival workers instead of “townsfolk” or “peasants.” There’s a nice little nod as Tornado is hiding to a piano player, nicely tying into this movie’s influences. There’s not a lot of action or dialogue early on: it’s a lot of running and following, with brief visceral acts of violence to remind everyone what type of movie we’re watching. Just as it’s about to be too low key, the third act comes flying in and delivers the mayhem promised by a title like Tornado. And at 90 minutes, that means just be a little patient for an hour y’all.
Koki even gets the badass shot of her walking away, tall, with a beautiful sunset. But instead of a Japanese town, she’s walking down from the peak of a beautiful Highland’s hill as the sun sets on this story. Tornado exists to remind everyone to be inspired by the movies you love, and if you’re lucky, get a chance to make one, in an act of service to the great movie history before you. All we needed was a whistling Enrico Morricone standoff to put the nail on the head; sadly I think Koki’s music might not work for an intense tet a tet.