action, Jack Lowden, Joanne Whalley, John Maclean, Koki, movies, reviews, Takehiro Hira, Tim Roth, Tornado, United Kingdom
June 24, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by John Maclean
Some language in Japanese with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in the British Isles, in 1790, the action film “Tornado” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians and one black person) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A 16-year-old girl is hunted by a gang of thieves who want the stolen stash of gold that she took from them.
Culture Audience: “Tornado” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Western-styles crime movies, but the characters are too dull and hollow to create much excitement.
It’s ironic that this tedious action film is titled “Tornado” because the story and hollow characters are as inert as stale air. Set in the rural British Isles in 1790, it’s a disjointed series of scenes about a 16-year-old girl being hunted by a gang of thieves. This is the type of unimaginative slog of a movie where the ending is easy to predict within 15 minutes after the movie starts.
Written and directed by John Maclean, “Tornado” barely has enough of a plot to fill a short film. This 91-minute film becomes repetitive and boring, as it jumps back and forth in the timeline to show flashbacks that don’t add much depth to the story. By the end of the movie, you still won’t know much about these characters except how they look when they’re in fight scenes and chase scenes.
“Tornado” begins by showing a 16-year-old girl named Tornado (played by Kôki) running from a wooded area and hiding in a house. It’s later revealed that she is being hunted by a gang of thieves because she took the gold (mostly coins) that they stole in a robbery. That’s really the entire plot of this poorly edited film, which shows Tornado getting caught, escaping, and fighting back in a sloppily constructed and vague timeline.
Flashbacks show that Tornado worked with her widowed father Fujin (played by Takehiro Hira) in a traveling puppet show. Her mother, who was British, died when Tornado was very young. The puppetry scenes are boring. And the father/daughter relationship between Fujin and Tornado is generic and doesn’t bring much insight into who they really are.
The leader of the gang is a ruthless tyrant named Sugarman (played by Tim Roth), who spouts a lot of cliché villain dialogue. Sugarman has a son named Little Sugar (played by Jack Lowden), who both fears Sugarman and craves Sugarman’s approval. These “daddy issues” are the reasons for many of the decisions that Little Sugar makes.
Everyone else in the movie has a personal background that is vague or non-existent. The performances in the movie aren’t terrible, but they lack the spark that would make this story stand out from other action films. It doesn’t help that at least half of the characters who speak don’t even have names.
Joanne Whalley has a small supporting role as Vienna Crawford, a sideshow character who helps Tornado. This movie becomes a tiresome and dull back-and-forth of Tornado (who suddenly show samurai skills) and the gang members in their battle for the gold. The action scenes aren’t very impressive. “Tornado” is as soulless and wooden as the puppets in the puppet show.
Independent Film Company released “Tornado” in select U.S. cinemas on May 30, 2025.