Slow West crescendos into a bravura shootout between all the involved parties, and it's as gorgeous, nihilistic, and brutally sad as the rest of the film.

With its weirdly lyrical portrait of frontier life, this blackly comic oddity balances on the generic knife edge between the western and the musical.

As the title suggests, Maclean is in no hurry. Even at the most climactic moments, he always looks for an offbeat perspective.

Mix in bits of out-of-left-field storms of violence reminiscent of the Coen Bros and a matching thinking man's wit and you have this unexpected, generously ironic Western delicacy.