‘Tornado’ is a wild, genre-blending ride – a revisionist Western, martial arts film, and heist thriller rolled into one. Set in Britain in the 1790s, and filmed in Scotland, it centres on a Japanese father and daughter pursued by English highwaymen led by a ruthless Tim Roth. They’re believed to be carrying hidden wealth, and blood is spilled along the way. This is a revenge thriller worthy of Sam Peckinpah or Quentin Tarantino, complete with puppet shows, fake blood, and philosophical debates about good and evil.

In one scene, Tornado’s father says that audiences always cheer when evil is winning; Tornado replies that good is boring. This is a film that is meta, brutal and stylized. Curiously, there’s no origin story for how the Japanese characters ended up in rural 18th-century Britain, and nor is one needed. The film embraces its chase narrative, using the culture clash to fuel tension and drama, in which a multicultural gang of drifters, including a black highwayman, adds further complexity. The visual style is intense – bamboo carts racing across the landscape, stylized puppet decapitations, and stylized blood splatter.

The question ‘what is home?’ hangs over the narrative, with Tornado, born of a Japanese father and European mother, a nomad entertaining strangers. There’s something symbolic about the highwaymen walking everywhere, like wandering ghosts or characters from their own puppet show come to life. Ultimately, this is bloody, brilliant entertainment with surprising thematic depth.