‘Smart men don’t get married…’
I’ve got a pitch for you. A Western with a modern feel that is also a horror film that is somehow both funny and gruesome and features the most upsetting death sequence ever committed to film. Audiences will lap that up surely, no? Against all odds, director S. Craig Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99, Dragged Across Concrete) takes these disparate elements and turns them into a cohesive whole…
When a group of cannibalistic cave dwellers kidnaps local doctor Samantha (Lili Simmons), it falls on her husband (Patrick Wilson), the sheriff (Kurt Russell) and his loyal deputy (Richard Jenkins) to retrieve her. Local big-shot Brooder (Matthew Fox) also comes along for the ride.
Any film that opens with Sid Haig and David Arquette playing incompetent brigands is ok in my book and Bone Tomahawk lives up to its early promise. It’s also a joy seeing two old veterans in Jenkins and Russell slugging it out in the old west and if they made a spin-off TV show just about those two I would watch the shit out of that. The cave dwellers, or troglodytes as they are colloquially known, are genuinely terrifying and Zahler, working from his own script, expertly weaves in comedy, action and violence into something quite brilliant. Russell in particular is so convincing as an old-timey lawman that I can only conclude that he performed this role in a past life at some point. He also sports a wonderful beard in this movie.
Like all of Zahler’s films, Bone Tomahawk is quite simply a lot of fun at the movies. He is a director who crafts original tales with timeless themes and memorable visual set pieces and for this, he should be cherished. It’s now been six years since his last film but with an announcement imminent everyone should come out to bat for his next project. A truly distinctive voice in modern cinema.