‘Tornado’ (2025)

Set in the harsh Scottish landscape during the 1790’s, ‘Tornado’ follows a young girl as she finds herself in a threatening situation. Daughter of a Japanese former samurai Funji (Takehiro Hiram), Tornado (Kôki) yearns for a life more exciting than her traveling around with father and pupeteering. Crossing paths with Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his gang, Tornado invites chaos into her life.

Starting the feature in hot pursuit, Tornado seeks refuge from Sugarman’s gang. Elegantly subtle yet tense, the viewing audience are forced to catch up and familiarize themselves with the situation. Not knowing why Tornado is being chased or who the pursuers are, the film intrigues and pulls in.

A less subtle further introduction to the brigands reveals the group of men to be a criminal gang in search of their recent heist loot – gold. With an unsuccessful attempt at trapping Tornado, the girl flees but is eventually stopped by Little Sugar (Jack Lowden), Sugarman’s son. Revealing himself as a traitor to the loyalties of his father and the gang, Little Sugar wants the gold for himself.

Making use of non-linear delivery, the film jumps back in time to show that Tornado was traveling with her father Funji, a former samurai swordsman and the two now traveling around earning money by pupeteering. Crossing paths with Sugarman’s gang, Tornado takes matters into her own hands when she decides to steal the gang’s gold, wanting a better life for herself.

Funji and Tornado collide with the gang again soon after, as Sugarman quickly discerns that Tornado had taken his gold. Funji is shot with an arrow and killed, but not before he manages to slice Sugarman with his sword. Tornado escapes and the film resumes with the girl fleeing the gang, headed towards a traveling circus to hide amongst familiar performers.

Paralleling the unhurried stroll taken by Sugarman and his gang, the film feels a bit sluggish. Even though it is glaringly obvious that Sugarman is slowly and quietly expiring, the man’s leisurely pace delivers a monotonous and vapid pursuit.

Exhibiting little by way of concern for the gold or strong emotions towards anything, Tim Roth’s Sugarman does little to entice. Brooding yet unmotivated, his chase perhaps fueled solely by principle seems counter-intuitive and almost ironic given that he is a cold blooded killer with little concern for anything.

Understandably wanting a better life for herself, Tornado’s actions as an angsty youth can largely be explained by the monotony of her life and a thirst for something more exciting than traveling around with her father delivering shows.

With a single sequence of Funji and Tornado practicing swordsmanship, the young girl is largely uninterested in the craft and rejects her father’s ways. Unconvincingly, Tornado later transforms from a whiny teenager into an unstoppable mercenary.

Taking on Sugarman’s men one by one, Tornado works her way through the gang, treating it barely as an inconvenience. Sadly, the seemingly unfounded transformation in both physical prowess and sense of moral duty emerges only after her friends and family have been decimated in pursuit of the girl and the stolen gold.

If not intentionally baseless, then perhaps negligently unwarranted, the main players of the feature seem to portray moral ideals or abstract concepts to which audiences may find difficult to attach to.

With hard to understand motivations the film fails to rouse excitement or sorrow for the main character, whilst also exposing us to a cold and distant Roth’s Sugarman, a man whose next steps may prove impossible to discern, given how erratic and unprovoked every move he makes is.

Stretching across the harsh yet beautiful Scottish woods and hills, the setting proves to be calming in-between the listless and somewhat muddled actions of the cast. Perhaps mirroring the unrelenting and unforgiving environment, ‘Tornado’ does go out of its way to place us in a very specific time and place, transporting us to a different space entirely.

Underdeveloped and too concerned with individuals representing ideas rather than real people, ‘Tornado’ is stylistically unique but does little by way of an enthralling tale of revenge. Misleadingly sold as an action adventure, the film mimics more a slow pursuit that culminates in an underwhelming confrontation surprising and exciting no one.

Score: 1/4