Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin reviews Tornado
Tornado (2025) is a new action drama film written and directed by the Scottish film director, screenwriter and musician, John Maclean.
It is set in Scotland in the 1790s and follows the travails of a young Japanese woman called Tornado who is on the run from a local violent gang led by Sugarman. The story is told in a series of set pieces played out in a remote country setting as the gang pursues Tornado for two bags of gold which she had obtained from a young boy who in turn took from the gang members while they were busy watching a puppet show put on by Tornado and her father, Fujin.
The narrative begins with Tornado running into a decaying, dilapidated mansion and hiding while the gang threatens the family. While searching throughout the house one member of the gang falls from the floor above onto an old grand piano.
A flashback shows Tornado working with Fujin, a former samurai swordsman, who has trained Tornado in the skills of martial arts and puppetry. However, Tornado is bored of both and is looking for excitement and a change in lifestyle. The gold provides the possibility of a new life which prompts Tornado to ask her father about doing something else with their lives [“Don’t you ever wish our lives were different?”]. The gang eventually catches up with their wagon but Tornado runs into the woods and hides the gold. However, all ends in disaster as Fujin is shot by the gang’s archer, but with all the speed of a former samurai, he manages to cut Sugarman across the stomach as he falls, injuring him fatally.
Back in the present Tornado has joined up with a circus troupe who she knows well. Once again the gang catches up and then goes on a killing and burning spree. Tornado flees again and finds the gold which she brings to a local lake. Taking a small rowing boat she goes out to the middle and drops the two bags into the water, keeping a small amount of the gold for herself.
At this point Tornado’s samurai skills kick in and she exacts revenge on the gang, unable to contain her grief and anger over the deaths of her father and her friends in the circus.
Minimalism
The style of the film music, editing, and dialogue, is minimalist. The action scenes are interspersed with quiet, empty countryside scenes, like moving from one mini play to the next, each mini play containing its own symbolism.
For example, Sugarman believes in honour among thieves [“Alright, get this to the safe spot, and equal share as always.”] A democratic bent which none of the gang members seem to share, as they are depicted as conniving to get all of the gold to themselves [“the work wasn’t equal, so why should this split be?”].
The mansion symbolises the declining aristocracy and the growing strength of a robber class – they had robbed the gold from the church which in turn had ‘robbed’ it from the peasantry. The piano is a symbol of former cultural glory destroyed by contemporary ignorance and criminality.
The confrontation between Sugarman and Fujin represents the conflict between the raw violence of the gang and the controlled, learned, violence of the samurai warrior. Twice Fujin states he has no wish for violence [“I do not want to hurt anyone.” “I do not want to fight you.”]
The gang attacks the circus, a symbolic confrontation between one group of people that uses violence to extort, and another group that uses their skills and knowledge to earn their living.
Tornado slowly realises that the gold has caused her and her friends nothing but destruction and death and so she reverts back to her survival skills and decides to dump most of the gold into the lake, thereafter attacking and killing the gang members one by one.
Tornado is a pared down, sparse film that operates not only as a revenge movie but also as an eighteenth century morality play, a genre of medieval drama:
Morality plays typically contain a protagonist who represents humanity as a whole, or an average layperson, or a human faculty; supporting characters are personifications of abstract concepts, each aligned with either good or evil, virtue or vice. The clashes between the supporting characters often catalyze a process of experiential learning for the protagonist, and, as a result, provide audience members and/or readers with moral guidance, reminding them to meditate and think upon their relationship to God, as well as their social and/or religious community.
Tornado’s ‘experiential learning’ teaches her that money may be the root of all evil but running away from oppressors merely emboldens them. By standing up to the gang and ultimately joining up with the circus she finds solace in solidarity with her social community. Her father’s comment during the puppet show that “They always cheer when evil is winning”, to which Tornado replies, “Because good is boring” is turned on its head as Tornado realises that the world of evil is irrational and unpredictable as those nearest and dearest to her fall prey to its destructive forces. This new opposing view falls in line with Simone Weil’s comment that: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” (Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace)
In the end, the multicultural aspect of the circus community symbolises the positive aspects of external, international influences on the home community / local people as a force for good to which Tornado aligns herself with. Ultimately Tornado throws in her lot with a hard-working, dignified, skilled group of people. Her struggle becomes symbolic of the peasant or worker who unites with other peasants and workers in their struggle against oppression by those in control, the elites who have power and will use any and every kind of violence to maintain the status quo.
Only through solidarity and unity with others in a similar situation can individuals hope for freedom and justice. As the rich are only rich from taking the wealth produced by others (rents, tithes, profit, etc.) the working class and peasantry tend towards socialist ideology that precludes the few from expropriating the wealth produced by the many. The word socialist comes from the concept of ‘persons coming together for friendly intercourse’, ‘ of companionship, of allies’, combining with others in solidarity against the powerful.
The film Tornado is set in the 1790s, a time that saw the origins of socialist ideology in the French Revolution of 1798, and the Age of Enlightenment which was based on ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights (inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason). In Tornado we see the raw beginnings of solidarity in the United Kingdom. As early as the 1640s, “several proto-socialist groups emerged, most notably the Levellers. They advocated electoral reform, universal trial by jury, progressive taxation and the abolition of the monarchy and aristocracy and of censorship.” Later in the nineteenth century, revolutionary socialist and communist ideas would emerge that tested the strength of ideas of unity and solidarity in those groups fighting against the extreme oppression of almost non-stop working hours in the factories. The moral values of unity, solidarity and fighting back (resistance) in the narrative of Tornado are as important today as they ever were, not only in cinema but in real life too.
Poster forSlow West (2015)
Tornado (2025) is John Maclean’s second feature film after Slow West (2015). Slow West has a similar structure depicting a young Scotsman’s search for “his lost love in the American West, accompanied by a bounty hunter played by Michael Fassbender.” As the pair head West through forests and plains, a similar style of theatrical set pieces tell many different aspects of the story with a comparable respect for and understanding of ordinary people in conflict with murderous gangs. Similarly peace only comes after a major confrontation with the main gang (of cowboys) who are usually portrayed as heroes in the cowboy genre.
John Maclean’s films are measured, intelligent and beautifully filmed works of art with a human face that eschew the ‘might is right’ ideologies of much contemporary cinema.
