Tornado

It’s more that the specific combination of jidaigeki period piece, highland character study, and frontier justice that’s new, making Tornado a harrowing, blustery, violent amalgamation of an idiosyncratic spirit.

Your enjoyment of “Tornado” depends on how much you want to root for thinly drawn characters who don’t look strong enough to carry an entire movie.

In the title role, the singer-songwriter Koki is both charming and indomitable.

Tornado is at its most bracing when it blows like a chill moorland wind, low and constant.

Visually, Tornado grips hard, and its climactic confrontations deliver adrenaline in spades, a clear homage to Akira Kurosawa’s signature blood geysers again and again. Still, in no way does this climax feel earned.

Tornado’s winking theatricality, thematic fixations with myth and avarice, and pared-down plotting add up to a heady concoction, but it’s more conducive to reflection than engagement.

The opportunities to create another great western are here, but they only somewhat arrive where they need to in execution.

Feels like a Quentin Tarantino-genre-mash-up-movie but one where Tarantino forgets to write the script.

Good visuals can’t offset an uninspired plot and unknown characters… which is what Tornado hopes to do… distract us with pretty imagery in hopes we’ll not pay attention to the lack of anything else of substance within the movie.

While the storytelling is somewhat elusive, it forces us to lean into each scene to understand the sharp-edged feelings and offbeat connections.