Slow West

• Written and Directed by John Maclean (Directorial Debut)
• January 24, 2015 (Sundance) / May 21, 2015 (New Zealand) / June 26, 2015 (UK)

A young Scotsman searches for his lost love in the American West accompanied by a bounty hunter.

Based on runtime I assumed Slow West would engage in some economy of storytelling based on sheer necessity. Yet at 84 minutes this movie drags like it is trying to stretch out so much nothing. Getting from Point A to Point B is a slow walk rather than a gallop. Slow West certainly leans into the name. It never picks up the pace. A little gunplay here and there but nothing fast.

Michael Fassbender is cast well as the shady and morally ambiguous Silas Selleck that just happens upon young Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who is looking for the woman he loves Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius) on the run over the death of Jay’s uncle. No offense to Smit-McPhee but he looks far too wispy to make it to an area that Selleck described as very dangerous. He demonstrates no survival skills and when the pair meet is nothing but a shaky young man with an unoiled gun.

Like so many Revisionist Westerns Slow West populates the movie with a lot of odd or quirky characters because a small trait or aspect is all that defines them. Not comedically but in a way that seems almost out of a comic book. Also like others of the revisionist kind we have someone pathetically innocent (Jay) moving amongst people that are just this side of walking excrement. Is it supposed to be some “bold” commentary that innocence cannot survive?

At 80 minutes there is a lot of padding in this. Like too many films you cannot see at the end how the story was set upon arriving at the conclusion it did. You should not see the end coming but when you get to the credits the sequence of events should be a line from the start to finish. So much feels unrelated.

After find a wanted poster and putting two and two together Selleck is after the bounty on Rose and her dad and using the kid to get it which is a good idea but given the short run time there is not a lot that directly builds the characters or the story. It’s just more given in dense chunks with establishing shots and some meandering dialogue. 

A Western whether it’s more action oriented or more drama oriented needs to hold your attention. I found myself drifting off. Slow West is just not very good because you don’t care about the situation or the characters. Jay is so pathetically innocent that you cannot invest in the character beyond pity-especially once you learn Rose thinks of him as a little bro. He is set up for most of the movie as the main character and the main should not be a sad sack.

Whether a movie is good or bad depends largely on the ending. I don’t think the ending does this film any favors. Selleck is the narrator but for most of the movie the drive is to get Jay to Rose making you think he is the main. Yet Jay dies and we see the final conclusion with Selleck making the movie actually about him.

Kodi Smit-McPhee is okay and Michael Fassbender probably would’ve stolen the show in a better Western. His relative moral ambiguity mixed with a traditional toughness makes him the best part of the whole story. Ben Mendelsohn as Payne was interesting but I found myself weirdly distracted by his coat which looked like costume shop fake fur.

This is predictable and sometimes predictable can be good. Sometimes you’re looking for comfort food and the predictable can offer that. It wants to be about dark characters and be complex but it’s very by the numbers based on how Westerns are done today meaning there are no real surprises. This wants to be something deeper and more sophisticated than it actually is or can be.

Slow West is not worth your time. Predictable when placed next to other Revisionist Westerns and just kind of boring. Skip!