Set at the end of the 19th Century, Slow West is an American western filtered through the eyes of European filmmaking. The story centres on 16-year-old Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smith-McPhee, The Road) who has travelled from Scotland to Colorado to be reunited with the woman with whom he is infatuated. He is quickly confronted by the dangers of the frontier and so teams up with a mysterious traveller named Silas (Michael Fassbender, X-Men: Days of Future Past), who agrees to protect him for cash. Jay’s journey is fraught with danger, double-crossing and violence as he comes to realise that America is not easy on the innocent.
“It’s only slow in the way a rattlesnake or a predatory killer is slow. This terrific film is actually tense, twisty and brilliant. Don’t be put off by the dull poster or the heartsinking critical talk since its Sundance premiere about it bringing a “European” sensibility to the western. Writer-director John Maclean makes a lethally stylish feature debut with this tale of murder and survival in the old west. He has put together a drum-tight picture with elegant and dust-dry humour; it’s wonderfully shot by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, and Maclean incidentally brings off a brutally outrageous digression that would make Quentin Tarantino proud.” – The Guardian