Maclean achieves his aim: to provide exhilarating samurai action while asking existential questions about the elemental forces that dispassionately shape, and can destroy us.

Think Kurosawa in a kilt -- not something we might have expected to see, perhaps, yet somehow it works.

The film looks and sounds like a better film than it is... Moments of beauty aren’t enough to make a film worth seeing, and there is something lacking here. Characters speak ponderously and act incomprehensibly.

Tornado is staggering in its refusal to convention, relishing in homage to masterworks of decades ago, while blending it with a fusion of fury and vengeance that propels this underrated gem to one of the best films of 2025.