This crackling movie begins with what some might take for a bit of misdirection: a quotation from a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky, the father of the great filmmaker Andrei. “I would readily pay with my life / For a safe place with constant warmth / Were it not that life’s flying needle / Leads me on through the world like a thread.”
Given that the movie concerns Tornado, a young swordswoman who has to make her way through a hostile British countryside after wastrels kill her father, one might wonder what Tarkovsky has to do with it. But first consider the statement rather than its origin.
Tornado (Koki) has been touring with her samurai father (Takehiro Hira) through rural England, performing a charming puppet show. An initially prankish bit of business involving two sacks of stolen gold gets the duo in big trouble with a pack of thieves led by Sugarman (Tim Roth).
The writer-director John Maclean, who deftly played with genre in his 2015 feature debut “Slow West,” is similarly sure-handed here. The movie quickly establishes itself as a revenge narrative, and each bad guy goes down in a way designed to suit the viewer’s justified bloodlust.
In the title role, the singer-songwriter Koki is both charming and indomitable; when she announces “I am Tornado,” you feel your internal applause sign light up. And Nathan Malone, who plays the little boy following Tornado as she eludes the bad guys, is reminiscent of the nervy star of Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood.”
Tornado
Rated R for lots of violence, some raw language. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters.
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