Tornado is many things: a British period drama, a western, a samurai film, a coming-of-age story and an origin story. Set in the windswept moorland of Britain in 1790, the film offers a lawless backdrop fit for a western, with no visible sign of the industrial revolution that began some three decades prior.

Its Wuthering Heights-esque wilderness, serenely captured by the cinematographer Robbie Ryan conjures up an almost otherworldly look.

The film is also a revenge story. Tornado (Kōki), the 16-year-old Anglo-Japanese heroine, seeks to avenge her father’s death, armed with a samurai sword. First, though, she has to escape the clutches of some ruthless highwaymen.

We begin in the middle of this action, with Tornado being pursued across a desolate landscape by Sugarman’s (Tim Roth) gang, who just killed her father, Fujin (Takehiro Hira).

They are looking for their ill-gotten sacks of gold, which they believe she stole from them. What they don’t know is that Fujin, a former samurai who was reduced to a travelling puppeteer in Britain, taught his daughter to fight and hid the gold. These archetypal components of western genre, gold and revenge are mashed up with a samurai-sword-wielding heroine.

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The cross-pollination of western and samurai films has a long history. There is the well-known influence of John Ford’s westerns on the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. Meanwhile, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) in turn directly inspired the classic Hollywood western, The Magnificent Seven (1960).

Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) practically started the whole sub-genre of spaghetti western, providing a template for the narrative and character arc. Both Sergio Leone’s influential A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Sergio Corbucci’s Django (1966) feature a lone man, seemingly a mercenary, entering a town with two warring gangs where he uses his skills (swapping samurai-sword-wielding for gun-slinging) to manipulate the situation.

Tornado’s influences

Tornado pays homage to Leone’s epic spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). This is most obvious in a scene where the vicious gang arrives at the circus troupe’s trailer site where Tornado is taking refuge.

A knife thrower (Jude Cranston) is practising his techniques, and his steady throwing actions make rhythmic noises as his knives hit the target board in succession. This creates a soundscape reminiscent of the masterful sound design of the opening sequence of Once Upon a Time in the West.

Read more:
Tornado is a Scottish samurai-western film – genres with a long-shared history

The sole black member of the gang, named Psychotic Bandit (Dennis Okwera) is conspicuously dressed in all black, complete with a black cowboy hat. This costuming is almost identical to one of the three outlaws played by Woody Strode (one of the first black American players in the NFL, turned actor) in Once Upon a Time in the West.

As he approaches the knife thrower and silences him, his out-of-place look (too dandy for a rural bandit) suddenly makes sense and serves a purpose. Like the Strode character, Psychotic Bandit doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t quite pull off the formidable calm menace of Strode.

The trailer for Tornado.

Tornado is also a typical immigrant family story that deals with the generational gap. The father tries his best to pass on his culture and knowledge (samurai skill in this case) to Tornado, but his teenage daughter, while reluctantly participating in the family business (a samurai puppet show) wants to have a lie-in and go to town. She speaks to him in perfect English as opposed to his accented English.

Although the presence of Japanese samurai as a travelling showman in 1790s Scotland is unlikely (considering that the first Japanese visitors set foot on British soil in 1832), director John Maclean’s interest in outsiders and marginalised communities is evident.

In one scene, now-wounded Sugarman faces Tornado and makes a fatherly suggestion that she go home, to which she answers: “I am home.” It’s a knowing exchange, even if it’s a bit of cliche. Through the course of the film, Tornado grows to accept her father’s teachings and comes of age, as she declares: “I’m Tornado; remember my name.” Though it feels a little contrived, it is fitting for an origin story of a self-assured samurai.

This coming-of-age story of a young female samurai, set in a desolate landscape, offers a downbeat antidote to the romanticised stories of a westerner who goes to Japan and becomes a samurai, as seen in The Last Samurai (2003) and Shōgun (2024).

In the end, however, Tornado tries to be too many things, and can’t quite cut it as a satisfying samurai film. It lacks the introspection of Twilight Samurai (2002) or the exhilaration of Zatoichi (2003) and 13 Assassins (2010). It amounts to an unconventional, but underwhelming, execution of a classic genre mash-up.

Chi-Yun Shin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.