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| Its four stars' faces against blue cloudy skies make up this untraditional poster for John Mclean's Slow West |
A bounty hunter helps an enamored teenager with his young lady, who has a high prize on her head, through the perils of the deadly wild west.
Slow West is written and directed by debuting John Maclean (Man on a Motorcycle (2009, short)).
It is a kind of reconstructivist western, which conjures up a portrait of the mystical west, which doesn't conform to the established facts that the genre's past classics have taught us as moviegoers. Instead character after character here share related reflections, which more seem to come from our present day, (and surely hail directly from writer-director Maclean.)
No one really distinguishes themselves in Slow West, and I continually wondered why Michael Fassbender's (William and Mary (2005, TV-series)) character continually helps the smitten Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road (2009)) character.
In terms of style and technique, the film also doesn't lean on the genre's traditions and conventions, and its very digital texture (or in actuality a lack thereof; a crisp, modern smoothness) is profoundly hard to swallow for this western fan.
Slow West is a small, easily forgotten, and not very promising debut, - and an extremely overrated film.
Related post:
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
Cost: Estimated 2 mil. $
Box office: 1.2 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.6 times its cost)
[Slow West premiered 24 January (Sundance Film Festival, Utah) and runs 84 minutes. Shooting took place in New Zealand and Scotland around October 2013. The film opened #36 to a 67k $ first weekend in 50 theaters in North America, where it peaked the following week at #35 and in 54 theaters and grossed 229k $ (19.1 % of the total gross). The biggest market was the main production country the UK with 559k $ (46.6 %); North America was 2nd biggest and Germany 3rd biggest with 225k $ (19 %). In North America, the film was simultaneously released as video-on-demand, which may have contributed to the low gross. Numbers from its performance on VOD are unreleased. The film won a Sundance award and was nominated for a British Independent Film award and a European Film award, among other honors. Maclean has stayed clear of directing since but made some music instead. Fassbender returned in Macbeth (2015); Smit-McPhee in Gallipolli (2015, miniseries) and theatrically in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016); Caren Pistorius (Mortal Engines (2018)) in The Light Between Oceans (2016)) and Ben Mendelsohn (Vertical Limit (2000)) in Mississippi Grind (2015). Slow West is certified fresh at 92 % with a 7.47/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Slow West?
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