John Maclean On Bringing Samurai Fighters To Britain In Sophomore Feature ‘Tornado’: “I Wanted To Make Something About Outsiders Of The Time” — Glasgow Film Festival
deadline.comTen years ago, John Maclean launched his directorial debut Slow West at the Sundance Film Festival, and in that 1860s Western film, the writer-director populated the story with immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Scotland who all mixed on the American frontier with Native Americans.
For his second directorial effort Tornado, which opened the Glasgow Film Festival on Wednesday, the Scottish helmer applied a similar premise. “Slow West was populated from people all over the world and I wanted to suggest the same thing in Britain,” Maclean tells Deadline of his newest film. “I had read and heard a few things about samurais turning up in Spain and, a bit later, turning up in Scotland.
There was a bit of an exodus of samurais because they were changing position all the time in Japan and they were becoming less warriors and more guns for hire, or swords for hire, and they wandered.
So, I just made them wander into 1790s Britain.” Tornado stars Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Japanese stars Kōki and Takehiro Hira (Shōgun).
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