Here’s a film so cynical it could double as an ad for the NRA. With the possible exception of two children under the age of five, every.single.person in the film, no matter how benevolent, is a thief, a murderer, or both. This entire movie is shot from the increasingly American-only perspective that everyone around you is a constant threat; you should be armed and wary at all times.
Halfway through the film, in fact, we catch a third otherwise docile person shooting somebody to death; it doesn’t end there, but you should know the film you’re getting into. In this version of the wild, wild west, “wild, wild” is a grand understatement; much of Slow West amounts to butchery.
Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is, to be kind, a noob. It is 1870, and the aristocratic boy has followed his love from Scotland to somewhere in the Colorado territory. How he got this far unmolested is an absolute mystery. He has an overloaded horse and a gun he doesn’t know how to use, and before you can say “Spuds MacKenzie,” he’s staring down the wrong end of a shotgun. Why is it being pointed at him? Who knows? His tormentors are out to butcher Native Americans, of which Jay surely isn’t one. But dinna fash, young Scot, morally challenged Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender) will take care of this with a single bullet. Oh, this is gonna be one of these films, huh, where everything is settled with bullets, is it? At least I’ve been warned.
Silas immediately extorts protection money from Jay. I suppose it was mutual, but … not really. A former bounty hunter, Silas seems to exist on a foreign plane from concepts like good and evil, right and wrong, or fairness and Trumpery. You get the feeling that he would rather not kill, but more for the fallout when killing happens rather than the ethics of any given situation. Nowhere is this clearer than when he enters a small prairie goods store where the owner seems to have a counter policy of “take a bullet, leave a bullet.” Silas is content to watch a deadly display around him without interacting, but once finished, the key move is the flee the scene; dead bodies lead to trouble.
Can Silas teach Jay to survive? Can Jay teach Silas how to love? Can their relationship become symbiotic? Well, no, of course not. We know as soon as Silas kills his first man that this film isn’t ending with both these guys alive. No how. No way.
Oh, and there is a small wrinkle … Jay’s love Rose (Caren Pistorius) is wanted for murder. In fact, there’s a bounty on her head dead or … sorry, “dead” is the only option here. Tough luck, Rose. (However, a small part of me wonders if this makes up for Titanic on some weird cinematic scale.) Hence, alone with Jay and Silas, every cutthroat and bandit in the state is converging on the one-room frontier house where Rose and her father live.
Against my better judgment, I liked this picture. I didn’t enjoy the cynicism, and I think the message of the film is, counter to its plot, not to love, ever, for that is when people become fatally vulnerable. For all Silas’ a-morality, I wanted to see if Jay rubbed off on him. For all Jay’s innocence, I wanted to see if Silas rubbed off on him. And for all the film failed to show a single character who wouldn’t commit an evil act if pushed, this terse Western was thankfully short enough not to infuse my being with its cynicism. Tell you what, tho, I’d rather live in the Unforgiven version of the American frontier than the Slow West version. Despite the NRA’s influence on our collective sanity, “kill or be killed” is not how people were meant to live.
♪Slow West, life ain’t easy
Slow West, makes me queasy
I’m on the road
Stranger in sight
Don’t matter at all
There’s comin’ a fight
Slow West, life ain’t easy
Slow West, makes me queasy♫
Rated R, 84 Minutes
Director: (“Officer”) John Maclean
Writer: John Maclean
Genre: ♪Everyone is evil♫
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Folks who favor an unromantic version of the American West
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Silver clouders
♪ Parody Inspired by “Slow Ride”
