Slow West: All Bark, No Bite

I really wanted to love Slow West. I really, really did. It's got an undeniable amount of creativity going into it. If it were a student film or short series on YouTube, I could have easily seen myself looking past the narrative flaws in the name of focusing on the technical achievements. However, it's a relatively major release, having been distributed by A24, so I deemed it necessary to give this film a fair shake. And unfortunately, not even all of the eye-catching and unique visual and design elements in Slow West could hide a thin screenplay that was barely enough to fill even a one-hour and twenty-four-minute movie. Now, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the movie - I most certainly did. However, I'm not going to try and say that it's a good movie because it's simply not, and a lot of the stellar reviews for it online seem to have skimmed over the fact that this film pretty much completely lacks a narrative structure of any kind. But I'm getting ahead of myself—first, the synopsis.

Slow West follows Jay Cavendish, a young Scotsman who is traveling across the American plains in search of the woman he loves, Rose Ross. Along the way, he meets a bounty hunter named Silas, who agrees to protect Jay. The two of them set off in search of Rose, and the film follows the two of them and their journey.

First off, I want to give the movie credit where credit is due: it's undeniably creative. Slow West contains a lot of unusual elements that I don't see in other movies and seems to draw a lot of influence from Wes Anderson's filmography, especially when it comes to the set design, which often feels like what can probably be best described as "The Grand Budapest Hotel...But In The West!" I'd never seen anything like it before, so I can see why many critics were able to overlook this movie's obvious and even monumental shortcomings: it's original, no doubt about that. There were moments that really stood out to me creativity-wise, most notably at the beginning of the movie when Jay points his revolver at a constellation, which is marked out as he mimes shooting at the stars. However, no amount of style can hide a weak screenplay, and let me tell you, this film's screenplay is really weak. The most notable issue I have with Slow West has to be its pacing, which is virtually non-existent. Nothing in this movie ever builds on what came before, which is extremely problematic, causing the film to lack any sense of momentum whatsoever. It's kind of like the writers had a bunch of great ideas for scenes and a cool aesthetic to go with them but didn't know how to tie it all together into one cohesive unit. The inciting incident of Slow West was also poorly executed, as the movie opened up halfway into Jay's journey without any reason for it and no explanation as to why it did either. In short, the plotting of Slow West is kind of infuriating. They also kept the movie's impressive visual aspects from being anything other than surface-level beauty.

As far as the acting was concerned, none of it was awful, but none of it was great, either. The only character I found myself mildly caring about was Jay, as he had a pretty compelling reason for going on the journey he did. I wasn't exactly rooting for him, but Kodi Smit-McPhee definitely delivered the best performance in the movie, even if the rest of the actors weren't exactly ironclad competition for him. But I think what completely did Slow West in for me was the end of the movie. If you've seen this film, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm all for subverting expectations, but you don't subvert them without reason or without alluding to the possibility of subversion before you do the subverting. This movie didn't hammer home its uniqueness enough to give itself a reason to exist, but even if it's a lukewarm movie, having the whole thing turned on me at the end without any warning or reason wasn't exactly pleasant. Although I must say, that visual gag with the salt was gloriously and darkly funny. You'll know what I mean if you watch the film. However, all that said, the ending definitely left a lot to be desired.

All in all, I found myself very let down by Slow West. If the movie had tidied up its plotting, I could have very easily seen myself loving it. But, given all of its flaws, I don't think it will ever be more than an empty and inflated exercise in style. It's actually an unfortunately impressive feat that the filmmakers were able to add as much fluff to this film as they did, given that Slow West is a super short feature. Forgive me if that sounds a little bit harsh, but it's the truth. However, even after all of my criticism, I think it would be a valuable experience for film students to watch this movie. It has some interesting ideas that may be expanded upon to better effect in future films, and if nothing else, perhaps it will be a valuable learning exercise: don't make your film any longer than you need it to be, because if you don't absolutely need something in a story that you yourself are writing, then chances are your consumers won't want it. It's kind of like the MCU's habits with their filmmaking. Quantity over quality is never a good model. In some cases, it takes upwards of five years for people to realize that. In other cases, it takes a mere one hour and twenty-four minutes.

Slow West - 5/10

Proverbs 27:12