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'Slow West' speeds up to a funny, exciting frontier gunfight

Slow West

Lionsgate, $19.98; Blu-ray, $24.99

Writer-director John Maclean's Western fable has a shaky first hour, trying too hard to be quirky and precious while telling the story of a dangerously naive Scottish immigrant (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) who goes searching for his childhood sweetheart on the frontier with the help of a good-hearted outlaw (Michael Fassbender). But once Maclean is done cycling through familiar pulp archetypes, he maneuvers the plot toward a climactic half-hour gunfight sequence as exciting and funny as the genre has ever produced.