Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorious, Rory McCann, Alexander Macqueen, Edwin Wright, Andrew Robertt, Brian Sergent, Bryan Michael Mills, Karl Willetts, Brooke Williams, Eddie Campbell, Ken Blackburn, Jeffrey Thomas, Michael Whalley, Jon Cummings, Madeleine Sami, Tony Croft, Kalani Queypo.

In many ways it seems that the logical romance that the world enjoyed with the Western, has long since passed into history. Politically out of step with the hey-day, only a few of the films that came from out of its so called golden era stand up to the notion of what the colonisation of the lands west of the great spiritual and ethical divide did to the nation and the bloodshed that happened. Films such as Shane, True Grit, perhaps more obscurely Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and from a less than perfect time Wyatt Earp and Dances With Wolves at least have that thought in their mind if not always in their soul.

The problem with the Western is in its depiction of how the brutality of the age was seen, far too romanticised, far too dependent on the idealism of the brave settler and the serial invention of what it means to be a savage, the genre kicked itself in the behind far too often and with no forethought of what it would mean to generations of film fans in later life. Thankfully there is perhaps a turning, a shift in cultural attitudes and what it means to be an American as The Homesman and now John Maclean’s Slow West pick up on the dirt, the exhaustion and the insanity that comes with pioneering and with the outrageous hypocrisy that has followed as the nation faces up to the diabolical treatment of its indigenous people.

For young Scots lad Jay Cavendish, America is a hard, seemingly relentless place and one filled with memories that are not of his own desire. His own yearning for the woman he loves takes him far from home and into a world that is long past losing its innocence as he witnesses the after effects of destruction of a local tribe and the heart cannot but feel weary for him as he slides into the hands of bounty hunter and reformed gang member Silas Selleck, played with unnerving ability by Michael Fassbender, as he travels west.

Whilst the story itself may indeed be slow moving, this level of maturity to the desperation found in those who sought a new life and embraced in many ways the cultures, or at least worked with the native people, is heartening and the bitter truth shown in the way that others sought a radical and rather sickening way of claiming the land west of New York is reassuring that in today’s cinematic world there are those not frightened to show the true extent of barbarism and genocide inflicted against the indigenous people.

Cinematically stunning, the film captures the heart and soul of the west, even if not actually filmed remotely near it, and the loneliness and feelings of inadequacy and the ineffectual that comes through as the long journey is made to the final rush of pace.

Slow West, like The Homesman, is a new breed of Western cinema in which the truth, the sweat and the isolation of pioneering America, of the genocide of the native American people are all bound together and that the rule of the bullet and the gun is not to be glamorised but used as a warning against rampant imperialism. A great debut by John Maclean and should be used as a bench mark for greater things.

Ian D. Hall