I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of westerns, but most of the ones I have seen I enjoy. I would consider myself a Kurt Russell fan, but I also don’t think I’ve seen enough of his movies. That being said, an immediate gap in my movie history is having never seen Tombstone, but after watching Russell in Hateful Eight on Christmas Eve and Bone Tomahawk last night it has jumped to the must watch soon list. That being said, Bone Tomahawk is definitely a western you should check out if you’re a fan of Kurt Russell, westerns, or just good movies.
Bone Tomahawk, which has a 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb and 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, begins with David Arquette slitting a man’s throat so that he and Sid Haig could rob the once sleeping trio. They stumble into a burial ground things take a turn. Arquette’s character drifts into Bright Hope triggering a chain-of-events that culminates with Sheriff Hunt (Russell), back-up deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), John Brooder (Matthew Fox), and injured Arthur O’Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) leave the small town to rescue three people who were taken from town by a cannibalistic savages. The journey is one that is expected to put them into a serious amount of potential danger, but all of the men willing go taking their share of the responsibility for the abduction happening in the first place. S. Craig Zahler’s directorial debut is a great piece of film that serves both the actors and the genre well upping the ante with gruesome special effects and some well-developed characters.
I really loved this movie. I grew extremely attached to the characters in this movie and found the tension built by Zahler to be fantastic. At one point I was so engrossed in the film that I involuntarily threw both fists into the air and shouted “Yes!” as the events took an unexpected turn. The dialogue in the film adds elements of humor and insight into who the characters are, for example, the morning after the abduction Clarence (Fred Melamed) walks into Sheriff Hunt’s home and Hunt simply says, “Why are you in my breakfast?” Fox’s character is the only one not married, a point he emphasizes when he claims to be the smartest man in the bunch stating, “Smart men don’t get married.”
Jenkins’s character offers much of the comic relief being the character with the gift of gab. His discussion about reading books in the bathtub with Russell is one of my favorite conversations in film that has nothing to do with the plot. It’s so random and at the same time heartfelt that it makes you feel for his characters childlike curiosity. However, this film isn’t all laughs. There may be the most gruesome death that I have seen on film, but, then again, I’ve managed to avoid all of Eli Roth’s films and Cannibal Holocaust.
I’ve heard lots of film critics discuss Bone Tomahawk and I was not at all disappointed. It’s an intriguing film with a simple plot, but has strong characters and is a fun journey film with terror and dismay. The attachment I felt for the characters goes to the performance of each, but also to the great writing that gave me insight into who they were without feeling like clunky exposition. I give Bone Tomahawk 8 out of 10 spoons.
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