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Bone Tomahawk

4/21/2016

15 Comments

 

C
2.05

In the 1890's frontier, a posse is formed to rescue captives from a band of sub-verbal, cannibalistic Indians.

Directed by S. Craig Zahler
Starring Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, and Richard Jenkins
​Initial Review by Lane Davis

Picture
​I wasn’t allowed to watch violent movies as a kid. The first ultra violent movie I remember watching was “Natural Born Killers” in the early ‘90’s and I had to sneak around and watch it when my parents were out. I think it took two weeks to get through the whole thing. I also wasn’t allowed to play “Mortal Kombat” when it came out. I had to sneak over to a friend’s house to play it. My parents weren’t Puritans, necessarily, but they were pacifists, I guess. Guns and knives and generally violent play were discouraged or looked down upon.

​You can help me therapize this and mine the depths of my childhood psyche if you want, but I think it’s because of this that I have an appreciation for horror and violence in film. I love how film can take the culturally taboo and splash it up on a 50 foot screen in full color and see what it does to us. “Bone Tomahawk” is a film like this. It’s a film that doesn’t go for the emotional reaction, it goes for the gut reaction.
 
In my last review of “Room,” I argued that “Room” was a film that might have been better conceptualized as a small screen format story. In contrast, “Bone Tomahawk” is a movie I’m sure would have been even better if I had seen it as a cinema experience. I would have loved to have seen and experienced the big screen blood and guts with an unsuspecting audience. And the big landscapes and sharply contrasting colors and lights/darks would have been awesome at 15 feet high.
 
A theater experience probably would have even changed the experience of the pace of the film. A complaint I heard from some was that this movie got a little slow in parts. Maybe, but this is an experience type of film that rewards those who sit patiently and wait with its heroes as they drudge across a sometimes bleak Western landscape. The slow build of anticipation is what makes the final twenty minutes of this film so worth it.
 
And the pace of the film makes room for some surprisingly good performances. Kurt Russell plays up the Western archetype and I hereby nominate Richard Jenkins for a Best Supporting Actor Mediocrity for his affecting sidekick performance. The “flea circus” scene delivers some unexpected emotional pulp—hilarious, heartbreaking, absurd; it’s like an encapsulation of how this film, like its protagonists, wanders and yet ultimately delivers.
 
There are two genres that I think reach their maximum potential on the big screen—horror and westerns, and Zahler does a fantastic job of brining out the potential of both in this debut.
 
Grade: A-
15 Comments
Shane
4/22/2016 03:37:04 pm

I love westerns. I'm OK with horror movies. I love sci-fi. So ths had 2 out of 3 things that I love. So why am I giving it a C?

I just didn't care about the characters outside of maybe Russell. There was nothing endearing in particular about anyone. I love Matthew Fox and he does a fine job, but the script just doesn't give him much to do. Hell, when the cowboy pops back up, Blair was like, can't this guy die already? Turns out he's the surviving hero.

This movie pulls something weird off. I feel like it just hit the ground running with a crazy plot, but it was running slower than me playing softball last night when I though I was gonna poop my pants. It, Just. Moved. So. Slowly. It was all plot driven instead of developing characters. If you're gonna have people traveling, at least have them say interesting things. Then again, I found the dialogue to be pretty poorly done, so not sure if talking would have helped much.

That said, I did enjoy the action scenes, in particular in the third half. Watching a guy get split by his balls/butt area wasn't pleasant, but it did give the move some stakes. I'd probably watch the second half again, but I don't think I'd care to ever watch all of it.

I'd definitely watch a prequel with Russel's or Fox's character.

C

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Bryan
4/25/2016 02:35:43 pm

A prequel where the savages are on screen for more than 10 minutes would be good.

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Bryan
4/25/2016 02:34:23 pm

I appreciate that this film didn't sink to the lowest IQ denominator. There was a passing joke about the table of contents and the number of veins in the ?neck? early on. They weren't funny, but they're weren't dumb. A big plus early was that the sheriff was actually in a hurry following the stable investigation.

One good joke - "Now that is not a handsome horse." It fit the scene and time period well.

The rest of the dialogue sounded like a high school play. Pretty flat and uneventful, just passing the time. The old man deputy's raspy voice was used entirely too much - to the point of painful to listen.

Another good line - "I'm far too vain to live as a cripple."
A good plot development - Getting the whistle from the savage's throat.

Overall, Bone Tomahawk was slow and at one point needlessly disgusting. It's almost like in Annie where they use the word "damn" to get a PG rating. I wouldn't recommend to anyone, it's saving grace was anticipation of the 2.5% of dialogue that was worthwhile.

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Bryan
4/25/2016 02:37:10 pm

Great review self, but you forgot the grade, dummy.

D+

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Shane
4/25/2016 02:41:17 pm

A+ on calling yourself a dummy.

Shane
4/25/2016 02:42:55 pm

I'm glad I'm not the only one who hated the dialogue. I read a review actually raving about how well the dialogue was written. I was wondering if we watched the same movie.

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Jon
4/26/2016 03:37:18 am

Modern westerns generally have a high batting average with me, especially of the revisionist variety that take a counter position to the classic westerns of John Wayne and John Ford. That revisionist take flips the adventurous aspect of Wayne or the cowboys-Indians dynamic present in so many of them, and instead, frames those on the frontier as desperate, occasionally genocidal, strivers given to brutality and/or venality. White hats and black hats is simplistic hand-holding, another example of American exceptionalists wanting to be told something pretty. S. Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk splits the difference between the two philosophies, presenting an absolute evil to be conquered on the one hand but also depicting those that would conquer them as unprepared and outmatched clowns.

Of those two halves, the absolute evil must be given heavier praise. Bone Tomahawk is an outlier, in that modern westerns do not portray Indians as the villains anymore. The one exception I can think of is in something like Hell on Wheels, which split the Indians into good and bad groups (that show sucked). The only 'good' Indian is The Professor, who rejects any association with the Troglodytes as much as any white person would. Zahler gets out of sticky territory by making the Troglodytes utterly revolting. I believe the latest hill that anthropologists are dying on in the 'what cultural characteristic most separates humans from animals' debate is that we have vast, vast capacity for language which enables us to build larger and larger organizations. The Troglodytes full rejection of spoken language marks them as rejecters of humanity. The larynx jewelry that enables them to do so is a stroke of horror genius, as are the sounds they make, which are enough to cause nightmares. Some have complained about their short screen time, while I would argue that we get exactly enough. The movie spends a long time building to their reveal, and they are worth the wait.

The straight western aspect takes a lot from other westerns. The basic plot reminded me a lot of The Searchers, in which John Wayne's niece is stolen by the Indians and he spends a lot of years, uh, searching for her. In Bone Tomahawk, I took the thematic meeting from Arthur's letter to Samantha, in which he confesses that everyone here is miserable, except for him because he's got her. The West as a place for sad misfits appeals, even as the part about the wife reduces that thought to a nice romantic gesture. There's also Samantha's derision toward all the idiots on the frontier, but I would imagine that sentiment goes away when she finds herself walking away from the cave instead of being chopped in two from the groin up. I feel like I'm reaching a bit here, but my expectation for westerns has been raised by several masterpieces from the last decade, as well as the masterpiece we're picking through on the Podcasts tab. Bone Tomahawk may not be as astute as those others, but if the gist was to introduce the world to the Troglodytes, that's a fine objective

In both the pro and con column, Bone Tomahawk has an exceptionally deep cast. If anything, the cast was too deep, as several parts, played by character actors I admire, came and went. One of the season 4 Wire kids showed up in the background with no lines. Once the film leaves the town, this ceases to be a frustration, though I certainly would've liked to spend more time with the bartender or the professor. Out in the wilderness, the dialogue takes a turn for the utilitarian. With the exception of Richard Jenkins' Chicory, these guys are fairly humorless, which I would expect frontiersmen to be in most cases. I won't deny that the characterization is a little thin, but the four main actors each get a chance to show their stuff and are all successful.

Bone Tomahawk takes its time, and makes that reticence worth it with some truly novel antagonists. I think this film most succeeds in the third act, and I think it effectively builds anticipation towards that act. I don't consume a large amount of horror films, but I think I've seen enough violence onscreen to recognize when someone's doing something out of the mold. Zahler is merging genres at a fast clip, and for a directorial debut, this is strong work. B

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Bryan
4/26/2016 07:18:25 am

Does directorial debut affect your grade? If this was his 25th Western, would the B grade stick?

Reply
Jon
4/26/2016 08:47:07 pm

I didn't realize it was Zahler's debut until I was writing the review. It was a nice tidbit to learn but I don't think it impacted the grade.

Shane
4/26/2016 01:24:26 pm

Where are you on Matthew Fox in general? I tend to like him, even though he hasn't shown too much range in the past. He's really nailed down being likable.

Reply
Jon
4/26/2016 08:49:40 pm

In looking at his imdb page, this was the first thing I've seen him in. I think he did well as the detached bad-ass type.

Cooker
4/26/2016 01:15:46 pm

The back of the DVD case says “Great dialogue, strong characters and imaginative and memorable kills.”

I suppose. Unlike previous responses, I did like the dialogue and as a writer in the group that’s got to say something. I enjoyed the little details like how to properly slit a throat, the costs for tunes on the piano and the debate of whether or not the love letter was a poem and lines like “you’re angry for a guy named Buddy,” and “say goodbye to my wife and I’ll say hello to yours.” I will have to say that the better conversations came toward the beginning with the exception of the talk about the flea circus toward the end.

Strong characters. Well. I enjoyed the characters. My favorite was probably Chicory. I think they could’ve been developed more so I don’t know how much I would emphasize the word strong.

Memorable kills? Nick, ew. That was about it. Anybody else have a problem with the first black guy to appear on screen getting killed right away? The stable boy. Unless I missed someone else.

Bone Tomahawk, in which Matthew Fox is killed by a tomahawk which I guess could’ve been made out of bone, starts off great. Slitting throats, creepy skull head land. But I had issues with the pacing of the movie and dull character establishing scenes. The naked ghost people were quite creepy, but once we discovered that the missing people were taken by naked ghost people, I stopped believing that someone else in the group or someone taken was involved somehow. Thought that could’ve made things more interesting. A decent flick. Nothing to really write home about unless you want someone to see a naked man get split straight down the middle. Ew. I think I’m giving this one a B-

Reply
Blair
4/27/2016 04:22:18 pm

This movie was boring and I was just waiting for people to die so it would end.

C-

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Bryan
4/27/2016 05:45:02 pm

Jon, please add this to review of the year nominees.

Reply
Tom
5/1/2016 02:26:47 am

I believe the studio set out to make a film which would just all around piss me off and not make a god damn but of fucking sense.

F.

Cowboys and aliens is how you do a scifi western.

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