Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smitt-McPhee take a journey that redefines the western genre in 2015's Slow West.
There’s a timeless quality to Western cinema that perpetuates its appeal across the years. Whether by the reminiscence of somewhat simpler times or the heroic figures that transcend through these stories, the genre has still produced outstanding films up to this day.
Eleven years ago, a new classic emerged in the form of John Maclean’s Slow West. Starring Michael Fassbender as a cynical cowboy and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a love-struck Scotsman, the film follows the pair on their quest through the American plains. At times, the film feels more like a buddy road trip with a western setting. It then exposes the brutal nature of the Wild West, all while dismantling the idealization of love.
Thus, in its tight 84 minutes, Slow West reinvents the genre by exploring the real motivations of those we call heroes. Through Silas Selleck, Fassbender perfects his ability to portray morally-gray characters, delivering one of the best performances in his select filmography. While the film underperformed at the box office, it succeeded critically, with a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score. All these years later, the score holds up, and the film keeps getting better with every rewatch.
Western Landscapes Are Meshed With the Brutality of the Times in ‘Slow West’ In Slow West, the vast western landscape is one of the main characters. Its beauty is highlighted in each shot by Maclean and cinematographer Robbie Ryan. The magnitude of the American plains might suggest a calm and quiet existence for its inhabitants, but the story of Fassbender's Silas and Smit-McPhee's Jay paints a totally different picture.
Their journey transforms the dreamy landscape into a lawless land with high stakes. Silas and Jay encounter many hardships in their path, like savage attacks and robberies. But, in Ben Mendelsohn's Payne, the duo finds their most ruthless antagonist. Through his crew of bounty hunters, Payne proves money is the driving force of shifting allegiances.
His presence somehow darkly mirrors Silas', as both share the motivation of a bounty. But, while Silas' ways are more nuanced, Payne resorts to brutality and violence to achieve his goals. Although Silas and Jay start off as a team, it soon becomes clear that Silas follows the"every man for himself" rule. The Wild West has forced him to develop a tough outer shell to protect himself from the world's harshness – thus severing him from any meaningful connections.
Still, through Fassbender's portrayal, Silas is fleshed out as a conflicted character with a redeemable soul. His loneliness caused him to lose touch with his humanity but, in his alliance with Jay, he learns to reconnect quietly with his empathy. There's no great heroic moment for him, just a slow turn into a better version of himself.
‘Slow West’ Teaches Tough Lessons of Life and Love Silas and Jay's journey originates with the latter's infatuation with Rose . Trailing her all the way from Scotland, Jay travels to America, where she has found a refuge for her and her family. Not only does Jay uproot his whole life to find her, but he also abandons his comfort and innocence along the way.
His naïveté makes you wonder how he’s been able to come this far, but you still root for him to make it out unharmed. Jay's journey is the living image of old-time love. He worships an idealized version of Rose that he has constructed in his mind. Through flashbacks, his perception of love is exposed as one-sided.
Slow West is clear in establishing this, anticipating that Jay won't become a hero either. Still, Smit-McPhee's interpretation achieves a sense of triumph, regardless of how Jay's journey was doomed from the start. COLLIDER. Collider · Quiz Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → QUESTION 1 / 10TONE 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind. ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once.
CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 2 / 10THEME 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours? AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity.
BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 3 / 10STRUCTURE 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means. AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different.
BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 4 / 10VILLAIN 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you? AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face.
BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 5 / 10ENDING 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like? AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it.
BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 6 / 10WORLD 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person.
CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 7 / 10CRAFT 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 8 / 10PROTAGONIST 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 9 / 10PACE 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 10 / 10AFTERMATH 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is… Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. BEST PICTURE 2020 Parasite You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another.
Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
BEST PICTURE 2023 Everything Everywhere All at Once You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful.
This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. BEST PICTURE 2024 Oppenheimer You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens.
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
BEST PICTURE 2015 Birdman You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible.
Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. BEST PICTURE 2008 No Country for Old Men You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning.
The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest.
No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ Slow West features a mix of elements of the Western genre: infinitely beautiful landscapes, a battle of two opposing forces, and a love story. But by slowly overturning each of them, the film achieves a unique essence.
Vast landscapes are reduced to confined battlefields, the opposing forces are painted in different shades of gray, and the love story transforms into one that never was. By dismantling all these structures of the traditional Western film, Slow West redefines the genre – and still holds up all these years later.
Like Follow Followed Slow West R Western Action Drama Thriller Release Date May 15, 2015 Runtime 84 Minutes Director John Maclean Writers John Maclean Cast See All Powered by Expand Collapse
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