Slow West

There’s a steely confidence to John Maclean’s debut feature, a lyrical fairytale in which a doe-eyed Scottish teen (Smit-McPhee) treks west in search of the object of a puppy-love crush. “He’s a jackrabbit in a den of wolves,” says the flinty bounty hunter (Fassbender) who offers him protection on his journey. Maclean’s askance outsider’s view of America’s Old West is bracing. He strips away the pioneering myths and shows it for what it truly was: a melting pot of foreign cultures snatching whatever was up for grabs.

This ugly human nature is depicted with beauty and wit. As shot by master cinematographer Robbie Ryan, each scene bursts with inventive imagery, from the spread-eagle skeleton of a moronic woodcutter beneath the tree he was felling, to a shootout in a corn field where the gunmen bobbing up to take their shots look like targets in a game of Whac-A-Mole. Maclean’s dialogue is similarly poetic. "Let's build a rail to the moon," says the kid. Like his protagonist, Maclean's a dreamer shooting for the stars. [Jamie Dunn]