‘My second film took a decade to make and is not your average period drama’
Award-winning director John Maclean reveals the reality of working on a 'notoriously difficult' second feature.
Director John Maclean is back in cinemas this summer with his second film, a decade after his award-winning and critically acclaimed debut, Slow West.
The revisionist Western starring Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee saw him named by Bafta as ‘a Brit to Watch’ and claim a jury prize at Sundance.
It was dubbed one of the films of the year and still has a 92% score from critics on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
And now Maclean’s finally returned with his second film – ‘notoriously difficult’ in Britain, he says – a Scottish samurai Western, naturally.
Starring Jack Lowden, Tim Roth, Japanese model and songwriter Kōki and Shogun’s Takehiro Hira, Tornado sees a Japanese puppeteer’s daughter get caught up with criminals when their show crosses paths with a crime gang in 18th-century rural Scotland.
A refreshingly unusual combination of things, Maclean reveals that Tornado ‘led on’ from Slow West as an idea, examining the concept of nationality again.
