Bone TomahawkI'm a fan of the western genre, so it was inevitable that I'd give this a look. If someone tells me Kurt Russell is in a western, I'm going to watch it. It's just that simple. The trick is that the closing stretch of the movie goes much more in line of that of a horror movie, and it's a damn good one. Were this a more popular movie, I can see people getting a little upset about the portrayal of the Troglodytes. To put it bluntly, they are savages. They will capture people and eat them. It is made clear in an earlier scene that Native Americans don't consider them anything other than troglodytes, so there's nothing necessarily wrong with the portrayal here.
Things start off with Purvis (David Arquette) and Buddy (Sid Haig) killing travelers. They hear horses approaching while in the middle of their robbery, and wind up trampling on a burial ground. That leads to Buddy being killed, and Purvis making the long journey to Bright Hope. To make a long story short, the Troglodytes tracked him there. When Purvis is treated by a doctor named Samantha (Lili Simmons), the Troglodytes capture both of them along with a deputy sheriff, and make their escape to a cave quite far away. In typical western fashion, it's then time to round up a posse. Samantha's husband Arthur O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson), deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), the Sheriff (Kurt Russell), and John Brooder (Matthew Fox) are the foursome that intends to make the rescue. The problem is that Arthur has a broken leg, and there are incidents along the way that force him to be left behind as the other three attempt to rescue Samantha. At least in the eyes of two of them, anyway.
I was surprised by how easily it was to like the cast. Fox was the loose cannon (a role everyone's accustomed to from his time on
Lost), Russell was the steady leader, Wilson is the good guy, and Jenkins is the rambler. Jenkins was particularly excellent. For a large portion of the first 75 minutes, the movie was very heavy on dialogue and on showing Wilson struggle to keep up with his traveling partners. Jenkins' character kept things from becoming monotonous, and I was surprised by how well the foursome came together on screen. Seeing David Arquette in a movie like this sounds like a joke, but it really wasn't. Lili Simmons as Samantha O'Dwyer seemed very out of place, though. Far too good looking for a western role, and her delivery was too modern. The movie was also very low budget considering the genre, so as far as cinematography goes, you take what you can get. There was also no score, so good dialogue was required or the entire thing would have fallen apart. I was careful not to spoil anything, because I think other people should watch this. I said things became a horror movie, and that's true. I was on the edge of my seat, but there was only one part so gory I had to turn away. By so gory I had to turn away, take into account what I said about
Green Room. You'll know it when you're about to see it, so it's up to you if you want to see something like that.
The story was very good, so as far as that goes there isn't much to say about the way it played out on film. It's more because of the cast than anything else, as this movie really could have used just a bit more inspiration and ingenuity from the director for everything to come off right.
7.5/10
