Slow West

For love, 16-year-old Scotsman Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has come to the American West in the late 19th century to find Rose (Caren Pistorius), the love of his life. His horse and his revolver are his only companions through the lonely and dangerous Colorado. But Jay soon finds he needs help to make it through his journey alive. In the mysterious Silas (Michael Fassbender) he finds a protector who is supposed to bring him to Rose for 100 dollars. Jay has no idea that the stranger has more than 100 good reasons to help him. Because there's a princely bounty on Rose and her father's heads that Silas is eager to collect. And he's not the only one...

In Slow West, the name truly says it all. For slowness dominates the narrative of this unusual Western. Musician John Maclean (The Beta Band), who here delivers his debut as a feature film director, manages a small feat: on the one hand, he loses himself in a leisurely narrative flow, which at times dispenses with long dialogues and is primarily carried by the great images and the convincing actors. On the other hand, it manages to wrap up the story in only 83 minutes, enriching it with a bit of wry humor and a juicy shoot-out. Yet, despite the short running time, the film doesn't feel rushed or overstuffed. And that's almost a little surprising.

Whenever the production is in danger of becoming tedious, Maclean sprinkles in surprisingly humorous moments that jolt the viewer. The discovery of a very special dead body, already skeletonized, or the firing of arrows by angry Native Americans are just two such moments, which incidentally serve another purpose: they pleasantly lighten the otherwise very grim story. After all, Slow West is far from the Wild West romance you remember from old Westerns. Jay and Silas' journey through rough and dangerous Colorado is dirty, gritty, relentlessly brutal, and not exactly the stuff of happy endings.

Michael Fassbender is superbly cast as the taciturn bounty hunter. Alongside him, Kodi Smit-McPhee comes across as a bit pale, but even his performance as the slightly naive youth from a good home is more than convincing on balance. And Ben Mendelsohn, who was last seen in Ryan Gosling's directorial debut Lost River, will also stay in the audience's memory for a long time as the eccentric bounty hunter. The good actors, the great imagery, the coherent narrative structure - all this makes Slow West a noble Western, a rousing drama that uses familiar motifs in a surprisingly original way. If you like it a bit more sophisticated and don't necessarily need a fast pace for good entertainment, this film can be warmly recommended: Worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp