Slow West

Slow West is a real treat. A western, most likely different from any western you'll have seen before, it is by turns funny, sad, tragic, comic and drily witty - it's a gem of the genre. Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road, Let Me In) plays a young Scot who's crossing the US in pursuit of his lover and her father, who have fled Scotland after accidentally committing a capital crime. He's joined by gunfighter Michael Fassbender, who offers help for cash, but whose true motives seem much murkier. En route, they encounter such staples of the genre as outlaws and "injuns", all treated in a deliciously different, offbeat kind of way and impressively enhanced by the cinematography of Robbie Ryan (an Oscar nominee for The Favourite). Slow West is a must-see. If there's one criticism to be made, it's of the oddly unemphatic title, which does the film no favours, and which remains enigmatic even after the film has finished.