Slow West (15)

Directed by John Maclean
Picturehouse, Liverpool
From 26th June 2015

Reviewed by Colin Serjent

Bang, bang, you're dead! While watching this movie I recalled this phrase I and other kids used when playing as cowboys.

The body count of people shot, sometimes for no obvious reason, grew and grew as this highly improbable film - fortunately it only took up 82 minutes of my life - plodded along.

They even glorified the mass killings even more when, in the closing sequence, they focused on each of the dead people who had been slain.

To make matters worse it is set in Colorado but in fact was filmed in New Zealand. Bit odd!

Gnarled and pragmatic Silas (Michael Fassbender), upon payment by Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee), attempts to help him track down his lover Rose (Caren Pistorius). They both grew up in Scotland but she had recently moved to America.

On the way various people are blown away, even by someone masquerading as a vicar!

To make this film experience even more galling was the reference made several times of Native Americans being described as 'savages'.

When Silas and Jay finally locate Rose, this naive Scottish lass inexplicably becomes an accomplished gunslinger.

Slow West, a further example of the American glorification of guns, was released shortly after yet more examples of bloodletting in contemporary times in the USA. Since 2006 there have been over 200 mass killings in the country.

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