Slow West (John Maclean)

[Philip J. Fry]

http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/slow-west-wordy-poster-small.jpg

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFfsTsdJfF8

IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3205376/) / wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_West) / RT (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/slow_west_2015/)

Official Website (http://slowwestmovie.com/)

[Philip J. Fry]

My two cents:
Gorgeously shot, good music, good acting... however, I thought it ended way, way too quickly. I would've liked seeing more interaction between Cavendish and Rose, as well as between Rose and her father and more time with that Indian guy that hung out with Rose and co.
And beyond that, more time with Payne and his gang and even more about Silas' past with them, ditto for the "priest". So yeah. Good action (specially the final shut-out, specially the visual of everyone appearing and disappearing in the cropped field), needed more character work, mid-tier Western for me.

[Peng]

Familiar and kinda slight, but it's told in such a weirdly relaxed and eccentric manner that it is quite a pleasure anyway, and the last stretch with that whack-a-mole shootout is great stuff.

[Philip J. Fry]

Familiar and kinda slight, but it's told in such a weirdly relaxed and eccentric manner that it is quite a pleasure anyway, and the last stretch with that whack-a-mole shootout is great stuff.The whack-a-mole shootout is both amazing and hilarious.

[Stay Puft]

Good action (specially the final shut-out, specially the visual of everyone appearing and disappearing in the cropped field), needed more character work, mid-tier Western for me


Familiar and kinda slight, but it's told in such a weirdly relaxed and eccentric manner that it is quite a pleasure anyway, and the last stretch with that whack-a-mole shootout is great stuff.

Yeah, I pretty much agree. The set pieces are uniformly strong and engaging, and it's all around surprisingly good work for a debut - consistent, anyways, even if not every artistic choice or visual flourish necessarily worked for me. (Also took me a few scenes to figure out what felt so strangely off about it - duh, that's not Colorado, that's New Zealand). I didn't care much for the story (it's thinly sketched, indeed) but that also doesn't feel like too much of a setback for a film that moves briskly through a refreshing 80 minute runtime. And those visual metaphors, haha - I'm still chuckling over the "salt in the wound" bit at the end. It's not much, but I'll go with a mild yay here.

I also liked the final sequence, the trail of the dead, or at least the idea of it. But it probably needed a stronger movie preceding it.

[Grouchy]

Man, this is a stylish flick. I agree with some of you that the script isn't that strong but the direction and the tone are the stars here. And speaking of stars, I love Fassbender. I think he has the vibe of a movie star from the '60s and '70s, like he's Paul Newman or something.

[amberlita]

And speaking of stars, I love Fassbender.

I wouldn't have watched this if it weren't for him. Ditto here.

This is a nay for me. Apparently this is the first feature film from a musician turned director? It shows. It feels like the sort of product that someone with an eye for visuals and a lyrical soul but no filmmaking experience would make. I almost get the impression the director had something to "say" about the sad and abortive type of violence that is typical in western films, wanted to use that as a vehicle for a melancholy (and truly wonderful) score and pretty images but had no idea how to create story and characters and relationships that would take the audience with him in substance rather than simply style.

I almost wish he'd just jettisoned the story and dialogue entirely in favor of music set to moving pictures. It works best in those moments. Though the cinematography isn't really that special. The movie is gorgeous, but it's shot in goddamn New Zealand. Just point and click and you'll catch an amazing vista that makes people Ooh and Aah. Not sure I can recall any sort of lighting or framing that I felt was helping to tell the story or change character perspective. So on second thought, maybe what I want is just a scrapbook of the film's countryside while a CD plays in the background.

While I too laughed (quite heartily) at the "salt in the wound" and grinned at wack-a-mole, there's a problem there....

It's random undercutting of what's seemingly meant to be a tense shootout. I'm all for injecting levity, but not when the film has been otherwise primarily devoid of it until the climactic scene. It sticks out like a sore thumb and not in a good way. Not that it matters much. The story creates no tension in the buildup to this sequence and it comes about 15 minutes too early. I enjoy a brisk film, but this movie is not brisk. The pace crawls while the runtime is short, as if they'd run out of setpieces and images. It's emblematic of the script's inability to connect the characters together in its downtime.

All that would be OK if I felt like any detachment was intentional. But it ends with a baffling punctuation as Silas chokes back tears over Ray's body with this awkward exchange:

Silas: "He loved you a whole lot"
Rose: "His heart was in the wrong place"
Silas: "But his spirit was true"

Then Silas tells us how Ray taught him there's more to life than a little money ya know, or some contrived shit like that. Where on earth did that come from? Where was that earned? Who wrote that script and thought "Yeah, we earned this ending". Was it another joke? Like the salt in the wound? Was I supposed to laugh? Because I did.

That was a more negative review than I intended to write.

[Irish]

I thought this was kinda brilliant. The more I think about it, the more I like it. There's something pointed in making a movie about the Old West, hiring zero Americans to play in it, and then shooting in New Zealand. That alone is so arch it gets me giggling. The humor here is drier than dry, and it operates on a scale somewhere between Gilliam and the Coens.

There is so much to unpack. At its core I think Slow West is an American immigrant story, but told in the form of Spanish picaresque meets Greek myth. It's a movie that tells a series of absurd stories and then peppers them with images of death as our two heroes literally and continually ride into the sunset in search of their goals. Every other encounter, every other scene, celebrates and then subverts American myths.

Consider Jay as the naif. Silas as the traditional, but bumbling, hero. Rose as the American Dream, the far off promise of a perfect future. That house beyond the trees looking like Winslow Homer at the corner of the Elysian Fields.