The ShortList Film Club moseys into town with Fassbender’s sharpest role yet
Some people are go-getters. John M Maclean, for example, when making his first feature film, Slow West, went and got Michael Fassbender and Ben Mendelsohn to star in it. And you – if you’re fast enough on the draw – can go get free tickets to see the film, courtesy of ShortList Film Club and our partners at Stella Artois.
Doing so would make you a go-getter, as well as a sharp-thinker who knows a no-brainer when he sees one. Not only did writer-director Maclean recruit two of the finest actors around, but he also slotted them into one of the finest debuts in years. A western with more than a whiff of Coen brothers, this festival hit is cool, quirky, touching, funny and has lots of people getting shot.
It follows the trails and travails of a worldly-unwise Scottish teenager, Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee; the boy in The Road and slightly older boy in Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes), as he heads to the New World to find his sweetheart. It’s a situation complicated by the fact that his sweetheart (Caren Pistorius) and her father (Rory McCann, AKA The Hound from Game Of Thrones) don’t want to be found, as there’s a huge bounty on their heads for a murder they didn’t commit.
This complication is further complicated by the fact that bounties attract bounty hunters – in this case Mendelsohn and Fassbender. The latter befriends Jay in the hope he’ll lead him to the human cash cows, offering to protect him as he travels the lawless frontier lands.
As with all good road trips, their relationship changes; but how, and to whose advantage? There’s one way to find out for free.
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(Images: Lionsgate)
