You know, I know the world's supposed to be round, but I'm not so sure about this part.

Bone Tomahawk

(2015)

(SPOILERS) S Craig Zahler’s movie debut, coming in the wake of numerous sold but unmade screenplays, is a highly accomplished horror western, exhibiting the kind of slow, steady unfolding, in full knowledge of a worth-the-wait climax, also exhibited by the likes of Kevin Costner’s Open Range. The major difference being, Open Range doesn’t explode into a crimson fountain of limbs and entrails, while Bone Tomahawk wades in knee deep.

Not being a gore hound, I take no great glee in the sight of an unfortunate deputy’s scalping, having a block hammered into his mouth and then suffering the final indignity of being split down the middle, but I suspect the horror fiend in Zahler took unbridled relish in this dubious achievement. Elsewhere, there are numerous dismemberments and a cathartic decapitation, as Russell’s Sheriff Hunt gets a too-late opportunity for payback.

Perhaps most wince-inducing, however, in terms of the protracted stress and strain, is the arduous journey to the location where the town of Bright Hope’s abductees are held captive, during which Patrick Wilson’s O’Dwyer, recuperating from a fractured leg, further damages it with his every step after the posse’s horses are stolen.

To be fair to Zahler, he isn’t indiscriminate in his employment of viscera. Indeed, he’s so measured and meticulous in building up suspense that he scarcely needs to be. By the time we reach the unhallowed hallowed grounds of the cannibal troglodytes (apparently it’s okay to depict Native Americans as mindless savages, just as long as they’re barely recognisable mindless savages, more The Hills Have Eyes than Stagecoach) nerves are jangling uncontrollably in anticipation of the terror awaiting our motley heroes (and to be honest, I’m glad he didn’t opt for a realistic portrayal of how people would likely react to the deputy’s death, since none of the characters would ever have recovered their wits).

And they are very much motley. Russell’s Sheriff Franklin Hunt wears the familiar whiskers of Kurt in western mode (going back to Tombstone two decades ago), and it doesn’t need saying he doesn’t disappoint. Only that, with his current minor career resurgence, it would be nice if he doesn’t make a habit of dying in all his new defining roles. As it is, it’s his co-stars who rather steal the limelight, the odd line aside (“Well, you’re pretty angry for a guy named Buddy”).

There’s Wilson’s O’Dwyer, desperate to rescue his abducted wife (Lili Simmons, best known for Banshee), so much so that he foolishly heads off with a busted leg and spends three-quarters of the movie looking like a liability who will certainly do for their slim chances of staging a successful rescue. It’s one of Zahler’s great strengths as a writer that, in a fairly simple plot, he veers from the expected in character fates. Okay, I was expecting Russell to buy it, and Fox’s cocky sharpshooter Brooder was also unlikely to see the final frame, but the turnaround of O’Dwyer, resourceful and resolute, was still surprising, even when it dawned on me that’s where this was heading. That said, it’s astonishingly considerate of the troglodytes to give their cave a back way in, so he doesn’t have to hoist himself up a rock face.

Brooder: I’ve killed more Indians than anyone else here put together.

The Professor: Well, that’s an ugly boast.

Brooder: It isn’t a boast, but a fact.

Fox is terrific in a gift of a part, Brooder being parcelled out a procession of self-assured and pithy one-liners, even to the point where he’s looking death in the mouth (“I’m far too vain to ever live as a cripple”), and given an amusing exchange (as above) with the town’s knowledgeable Native American. And, while he maybe antagonistic and aloof, Brooder surely loves his horse.

Richard Jenkins as Chicory gives the talkative (and then some, particularly on the subject of flea circuses and reading in the bath) old-timer a touching moral code (“One of them was wearing a crucifix” he protests of the bandits shot down by Brooder; “Then Jesus should have helped him” comes the reply). There’s also good support from Simmons, and David Arquette as the throat-cutting, grave-desecrating outlaw who starts all this.

As for the troglodytes, they’re a fearsome bunch, possibly a little too acrobatic when it comes to being flattened by bullets, but with arrestingly outlandish throat adornments/implants that give them a unique (slightly Predator-esque) method of communication (part of O’Dwyer’s rehabilitation into a hero comes when he removes one and lures others to their doom with it).

Zahler has made nothing short of a first rate B-movie here, one he elevates with fine, memorable characterisations and a keen choice of cast. It will be interesting to see which way the entirely exploitation-titled Brawl in Cell Block 99 takes him. What makes Bone Tomahawk so arresting is that it takes western characters and throws them into a horror scenario; it may lack the subtext of a Deliverance or Southern Comfort, but it succeeds as a character piece long before it’s overwhelmed in splatter. Can he do the same for the prison genre?

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

You're not only wrong. You're wrong at the top of your voice.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
I’ve seen comments suggesting that John Sturges’ thriller hasn’t aged well, which I find rather mystifying. Sure, some of the characterisations border on the cardboard, but the director imbues the story with a taut, economical backbone.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

How do you like that – Cuddles knew all the time!

The Pleasure Garden (1925)
(SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s first credit as director, and his account of the production difficulties, as related to Francois Truffaut, is by and large more pleasurable than The Pleasure Garden itself. The Italian location shoot in involved the confiscation of undeclared film stock, having to recast a key role and borrowing money from the star when Hitch ran out of the stuff.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

The present will look after itself. But it’s our duty to realise the future with our imagination.

Until the End of the World (1991)
(SPOILERS) With the current order devolving into what looks inevitably like a passively endorsed dystopia, a brave new chipped and tracked vision variously in line with cinema’s warnings (or its predictive programming, depending on where your cynicism lands), I’ve been revisiting a few of these futuristic visions. That I picked the very Euro-pudding Until the End of the World is perhaps entirely antagonistic to such reasoning, seeing as how it is, at heart, a warm and fuzzy, upbeat, humanist musing on where we are all going.

Anything can happen in Little Storping. Anything at all.

The Avengers 2.22: Murdersville
Brian Clemens' witty take on village life gone bad is one of the highlights of the fifth season. Inspired by Bad Day at Black Rock, one wonders how much Murdersville's premise of unsettling impulses lurking beneath an idyllic surface were set to influence both Straw Dogs and The Wicker Mana few years later (one could also suggest it premeditates the brand of backwoods horrors soon to be found in American cinema from the likes of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper).

The President is dead. You got that? Somebody’s had him for dinner.

Escape from New York (1981)
(SPOILERS) There’s a refreshingly simplicity to John Carpenter’s nightmare vision of 1997. Society and government don’t represent a global pyramid; they’re messy and erratic, and can go deeply, deeply wrong without connivance, subterfuge, engineered rebellions or recourse to reset. There’s also a sense of playfulness here, of self-conscious cynicism regarding the survival prospects for the US, as voiced by Kurt Russell’s riff on Clint Eastwood anti-heroics in the decidedly not dead form of Snake Plissken. But in contrast to Carpenter’s later Big Trouble in Little China (where Russell is merciless to the legend of John Wayne), Escape from New York is underpinned by a relentlessly grim, grounded aesthetic, one that lends texture and substance; it remains one of the most convincing and memorable of dystopian visions.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog