Slow West

Academy Award®-nominated Michael Fassbender plays brutish loner Silas Selleck, leading 16-year-old Jay Cavendish across America in John Maclean’s SLOW WEST. In 1870, love rouses Jay, still wet behind the ears, to leave his noble family in Scotland and follow peasant Rose and her father John Ross to the American West. Amidst greedy outlaws and defensive Native Americans, it’s remarkable Jay makes it to the Colorado Territory on his own. Still, aware of his limitations, he accepts the guidance of Silas, who promises, for a mere $100, to reunite Jay with his lost love just past a forest called Silver Ghost. Little does Jay know that Silas, like countless other desperados, has an ulterior motive. Filmed in the spectacular New Zealand outback and winner of the Dramatic World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, this absorbing western pits the competing desires of love and money against the wiles of the frontier. – E.B.