Bone Tomahawk

_**Slow-burn Indie Western with a quality cast builds to a potent climax**_ In the 1890s, four men in the Southwest -- a sheriff (Kurt Russell), his aged deputy (Richard Jenkins), a gunslinger (Matthew Fox) and a wounded cowboy foreman (Patrick Wilson) -- set out to bring back captives kidnapped by a mysterious nameless tribe that lives several days ride away. Lili Simmons plays the cattleman’s wife while David Arquette plays a trashy outlaw. Sid Haig has a small role in the opening. “Bone Tomahawk” (2015) has a surprisingly good cast for an Indie Western that only cost $1.8 million and shot in 21 days. It was the first film written/directed by S. Craig Zahler and reveals a master filmmaker in that he was able to make a quality movie on such a low-budget. The film has the confidence to take its time with interesting characters and entertaining mundane dialogues, which is reminiscent of Tarantino. There are flashes of violence, but this is a slow-burn Western that builds to a rewarding climax. It’s a unique Western that meshes the Tarantino-style with realistically mundane Westerns like “The Homesman” (2014) and horrific gritty Indies like “Cry Blood, Apache” (1970). It’s superior to the latter two, especially “Cry Blood,” but it’s not quite in the ballpark of Tarantino due to lack of funds. Yet it ain’t far off either. The movie runs 2 hours, 12 minutes, and was shot at Paramount Ranch, Agoura, California. GRADE: B+/A-

Fugly. There were so many things to dislike, hate, and/or projectile-vomit from this ghastly horror that I am a little embarrassed about how I couldn't wait to grab some alone time to watch Bone Tomahawk. This is a gorge-suppressingly awful movie that is too long, more tedious than suspenseful, and features a man getting scalped, strangled, and split in two, crotch to chops. I thought the water buffalo in Apocalypse Now had it easier. The movie vaguely reminded me of John McTiernan's The Thirteenth Warrior (with a dash of Quest for Fire). In TTW, an Arab diplomat hooks a ride with Beowulf and his posse. The blood flows like spaghetti sauce as the "Geats" fight it out with a tribe of spider-worshipping Neandernasties. Here, a mini-posse of 1890s Southwesterners go on a rescue mission into desert badlands held by a pack of "Trogladytes." Where McTiernan drives the narrative at a bone-crushing pace, Bone Tomahawk crushes bones, slices scalps and genetalia, and makes the characters almost impossible to like. Kurt Russell, a man who has a voice as gritty as his stare is cold, is so restrained that the fire he brought to Tombstone is almost snuffed out. I suspect the movie tried to present the good guys as flawed and believable, but we get tired of endless trudging through the outback of the Southwest while the characters use arcane language. As I'm writing this, I'm slowly changing my mind about the blandness of the characters. Maybe they are, in their own way, working-class anti-heroes, but I just wanted a bit more savagery on the part of the "good guys." I'm going to hit "submit" now and hope my wife has not prepared spaghetti for dinner.

At the scene where one of his townsfolk was killed and three were kidnapped, sheriff “Hunt” (Kurt Russell) discovers a fragment of a weapon made of bone and that leads him to believe that it’s a tribe of troglodyte natives who live in distant caves who are behind the crime. Unsure why they have uncharacteristically ventured into “Bright Hope”, he recruits the injured husband of one of those missing (Patrick Wilson), his own long-suffering deputy “Chicory” (Richard Jenkins) and loner gunslinger “Brooder” (Matthew Fox) to rescue them. Now they can’t say they weren’t warned about these warriors, and before long they realise that their weapons are every bit as effective as their guns and that their brutality cares not for age nor sex. Gradually we learn the cause of their fury, but with the party hopelessly outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and outsmarted what chance they won’t just end up suffering the same fate as the apprehended? Initially I felt Russell a little too lightweight for this gritty part, but he actually fares quite well once we head into the desert and the realms of these scantily clad remnants of prehistoric existence. It’s instinctively violent, graphically at times, and the tense direction leaves us feeling quite a naturally palpable as opposed to choreographed and manufactured sense of fear for this ill-equipped posse. Wilson also punches above his usual weight as he drags his determined “Arthur” across this unforgiven terrain hoping, perhaps against hope, to save his wife from a truly grizzly fate. A western it may be, but it has elements of horror to it that are actually quite gruesome as it rattles along for a couple of hours and though uncomfortable to watch, it's well worth it.