An entire decade has slipped by since the release of John Maclean’s debut feature, the frisky meta western Slow West, which, if nothing else, presented a savvy operator hankering to get his mitts dirty in the world of genre. His belated return to writing and directing retains a dash of eccentricity and a fondness for folding up and repurposing convention like it were a little origami bird, but this sadly feels a lot more like a roughedged first film than Slow West did way back when.

Drawing on the macho, high-plains sagas of Sergio Leone as well as Akira Kurosawa’s games of psychological chess, Tornado follows a Japanese father-daughter duo trundling down the muddied byways of rural Scotland in the late 1700s and plying their trade as performers of a samurai-themed puppet show. She, named Tornado (Kōki), is bored with her lot, while he (Takehiro Hira), embraces the hushed nobility of this artisan profession.

It’s not long before a hoard of gurning, grime-covered goons, each tooled-up with their own signature weapon, are chasing her across the landscape, because she pounced on the split-second opportunity to relieve them of two sacks of gold coins, the plunder from a criminal enterprise and en route to be divvyed out among them. The gang is led by Tim Roth’s Sugarman, who is basically Tim Roth were Tim Roth a poetically-inclined 18th century miscreant, who is at loggerheads with his son, Little Sugar (Jack Lowden), who wants nothing more than to get one over on his abusive pop and his pals. Maybe this snafu involving Tornado might be the right time to stick the knife in?

You can see what Maclean is aiming for here, but it feels as if he’s carefully selected a few modest ingredients, and rather than combining them to concoct a subtle, gourmet dish, we have a few strong flavours that don’t really work in concert. The heist/chase mechanics are decent, but it’s all too schematic, and the twists are often stealthy plot devices rather than ways into the drama.

On the atmospherics front, the film fares much better, with Robbie Ryan’s cinematography drawing out an autumnal haze of the spartan landscape, and some lovely little folksy production design embellishments from Elizabeth El-Kadhi. Part of the story takes in an encampment of travelling players, and the design of the mobile lodging and painted signage is a joy. It’s just a shame that these elements have so little to add to the story.

The real problem here is a script which favours bathetic proclamations over any real desire to get under the skins of the characters. Tornado herself as the feisty heroine is tragically one dimensional, and the only real tension in the film derives from the testy father-son relationship between Roth and Lowden. And even that comes to a head in a way that’s both anticlimactic and illogical.

It’s laudable that Maclean wants to breathe new life into unabashed “B” material, but unfortunately the idiosyncratic touches have usurped rather than bolstered what should be robust, time-honoured noir framework, and we’re left with a film which leaves only a superficial impression and little sense of purpose.

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Open­ing with a tat­tered jour­nal, dam­aged by water and fire and con­tain­ing the writ­ings of an unknown hand, Heads or Tails? will be ​“quite a sto­ry,” as promised in the open­ing voiceover nar­ra­tion of John C. Reil­ly as Buf­fa­lo Cody, the bison hunter and Indi­an Wars vet­er­an turned tour­ing impre­sario of a famous ​“Wild West Show” fea­tur­ing ridin’, ropin’, shootin’, and too-good-to-fact-check sto­ries about how the West was won.

The film opens in Italy, where Buf­fa­lo Bill per­forms his pageant of con­quest for an audi­ence of Uni­fi­ca­tion-era gen­try. Open­ing in black and white and Acad­e­my ratio, like a clas­sic Hol­ly­wood West­ern, the vio­lent Wild West show is ini­tial­ly quite real­is­tic — or as real­is­tic as a clas­sic Hol­ly­wood West­ern — before Buf­fa­lo Bill emerges from behind the cur­tain back­drop, and the aspect ratio widens and the film shifts to cov­er. (The palette retains the pointil­lis­tic sat­u­ra­tion of direc­tors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Mat­teo Zop­pis’ pre­vi­ous film The Tale of King Crab. The cel­lu­loid blues are espe­cial­ly rich and hand­some, and some actors appear to have been cast for their eyes.) ​“Amer­i­ca is the land of free­dom,” says Buf­fa­lo Bill before mim­ing the killing of his Native co-stars; at the sub­se­quent recep­tion and press con­fer­ence, he express­es his admi­ra­tion for them, but they don’t speak.

Inspired by the show, one of Bill’s Ital­ian hosts boasts of his own horsemen’s skills; Bill, sens­ing a good show, takes his bet and sets up a bronc-break­ing exhi­bi­tion, at which San­ti­no (Alessan­dro Borghi), the nobleman’s best hired man and a par­tic­u­lar favorite of his younger French wife Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), dis­obeys orders to throw the com­pe­ti­tion, and fur­ther catch­es the eye of the fair maid­en — no won­der, as Borghi is a swarthy, pierc­ing Tomas Mil­ian type.) A cow­boy is ​“pure of heart,” says Reil­ly in voiceover as San­ti­no bucks atop a white stal­lion, but as in the sto­ry of Lancelot and Guin­e­vere, chival­ric tra­di­tion and court­ly love get more com­pli­cat­ed than intend­ed. When San­ti­no wins, humil­i­at­ing Bill, his liege con­fronts him, and accus­es his own wife of infi­deli­ty; she shoots him dead with a Lady Der­ringer. Rosa and San­ti­no flee on horse­back in a long scrolling left-to-right track­ing shot, the cam­era dol­ly sprint­ing breath­less­ly to keep up as two race through the mag­ic hour’s actu­al, lit­er­al frisca­lat­ing dusk­light. (Lat­er, at the end of the film, the same horse will ride right to left, into the sunset.)

With his fringed embroi­dered leather jack­et and sil­ver goa­tee, Reil­ly resem­bles the Buf­fa­lo Bill of pho­tographs, a star-span­gled show­man played by, among oth­ers, Louis Cal­h­ern in the rough-and-tum­ble back­stage musi­cal Annie Get Your Gun and Paul New­man in Robert Altman’s Buf­fa­lo Bill and the Indi­ans, or Sit­ting Bull’s His­to­ry Les­son, a cyn­i­cal rasp­ber­ry blown in 1976, after defeat in Viet­nam and at the height of Bicen­ten­ni­al-era patri­o­tism. The char­ac­ter is a straight­for­ward Amer­i­can sig­ni­fi­er that is eas­i­ly bent to revi­sion­ist pur­pos­es, as is the corset that Rosa soon sheds as she and San­ti­no keep ahead of the track­ers on their trail, and the trail of a reward for his cap­ture and her safe return. But despite this, and despite sub­plots such as the revolt of labor­ers against a das­tard­ly rail­road baron, the film is hard­ly in the left­ist tra­di­tion of spaghet­ti West­erns like Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. As in The Tale of King Crab, an exis­ten­tial quest against a back­drop of South Amer­i­can colo­nial­ism that took a much gen­tler polit­i­cal tack than, say, Martel’s Zama or Gálvez’s The Set­tlers, Rigo de Righi and Zop­pis, and their cowriter Car­lo Sal­sa, are more inter­est­ed in a good yarn — and a meta-dis­course on storytelling.

So as Rosa and San­ti­no escape man­hunters which come to include Buf­fa­lo Bill, Reilly’s nar­ra­tion, which includes chap­ter titles like ​“Kid­napped” and ​“To the Res­cue,” sets a mock-leg­endary tone, and rather mis­con­strues the sto­ry, fol­low­ing the Want­ed posters in cred­it­ing San­ti­no with the incit­ing killing, and mak­ing Rosa out as a hostage rather than a per­pe­tra­tor. Buf­fa­lo Bill’s florid and unre­li­able prose resem­bles, to use his own phrase, one of the ​“dime-store nov­el” that print­ed the leg­end of the emerg­ing West, enlarg­ing its heroes and sand­ing off its bru­tal­i­ty — like the books of Ned Bunt­line, whose sto­ries cre­at­ed the Buf­fa­lo Bill per­sona, and inspired screen West­ern nov­el­ists like W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), whose illu­sions are shat­tered in Unfor­giv­en, or indeed Eli Cash in The Roy­al Tenen­baums. Intrigu­ing­ly, though Reil­ly nar­rates in first per­son, the actu­al writer of the voiceover script is Buf­fa­lo Bill’s com­pan­ion and faith­ful amanu­en­sis John­ny, shown through­out the film to be scrib­bling in the note­book from the opening.

As Rosa and San­ti­no weath­er encoun­ters with rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and ban­dits, expe­ri­enc­ing jail­breaks and shootouts, greed and betray­al, it’s San­ti­no becomes the sub­ject of out­law bal­lads, which cred­it him as strik­ing a blow against the oli­garchy, rewrit­ing Rosa’s role to be more pas­sive in the ser­vice of polit­i­cal myth­mak­ing. When San­ti­no starts to sing along, and embell­ish his leg­end fur­ther, the appro­pri­a­tion of Rosa’s sto­ry becomes a sore point.

Tak­ing on the iconog­ra­phy of a hoary adven­ture sto­ry with a light touch, Rigo de Righi and Zop­pis don’t always rub suf­fi­cient­ly against the grain of arche­type to gen­er­ate real sparks. The film sags in the mid­dle, and many of its tweaks to for­mu­la, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing Rosa’s recla­ma­tion of her agency, are rote or mere­ly cutesy, despite ris­ing star Tereszkiewicz’s rosy-cheeked mox­ie. But equal­ly there are won­ders here in the vein of the dirty-fin­ger­nailed mag­ic real­ism that is con­tem­po­rary Ital­ian cinema’s most reward­ing mode, as in Alice Rohrwacher’s Hap­py As Laz­zaro and Pietro Marcello’s Scar­let. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Simone D’Arcangelo, who also shot King Crab, lights ani­mals beau­ti­ful­ly, with sub­tle spot­lights, so they stand out as at once earthy and ethe­re­al, like in Night of the Hunter, and Rigo de Righi and Zop­pis retain their eye for rough-hewn peas­ant faces. (King Crab​’s Gabriele Sil­li, with his wild-man beard, and aura of fog­gy vicious­ness, receives a star’s entrance.)

And most of all there’s John C. Reil­ly, who plays Buf­fa­lo Bill with a magician’s pat­ter, like Reed Rothchild in Boo­gie Nights, giv­ing him an ingen­u­ous­ness, a bluffer’s self-sat­is­fied con­fi­dence, and an entrepreneur’s shrewd­ness. He helps great­ly in the film­mak­ers’ mis­sion to put the West­ern in air quotes, to play with­in and com­ment on the genre, in par­tic­u­lar its even more exoti­ciz­ing Euro­pean man­i­fes­ta­tions, like the nov­els of Karl May, the Ned Bunt­line of Ger­many. It’s a mas­sive­ly charis­mat­ic per­for­mance on par with any­thing else in Reilly’s career, and gives all-Amer­i­can sub­stance to this clever Ital­ian mistranslation.

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