Bone Tomahawk **** (2015, Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins) – Movie Review

Writer-director S Craig Zahler’s 2015 epic Western is a brilliant bone-cruncher. It’s a bone-a-fide gun-slinging cult hit.

When there’s trouble in a Wild West town, the grizzled sheriff (Kurt Russell), his ancient back-up deputy (Richard Jenkins) and two other men set out to rescue three captives from the clutches of their abductors, who turn out to be cave-dwelling fine young cannibals. The quartet have absolutely no idea of the hell they are riding into.

Patrick Wilson plays Arthur, the loving husband of Samantha (Lili Simmons), who has been abducted from the jail by the cannibals, along with young Deputy Nick (Evan Jonigkeit). Arthur has broken his leg and can’t hardly walk but it’s his duty to join the mini-posse and help save his wife.

Sheriff Hunt is one tough, switched-on hombre, ready to shoot a thieving, murdering villain like Purvis (David Arquette) in the leg just on suspicion, which is roughly how the movie gets started, as town doctor Samantha is conducted over to the jail to operate on Purvis to take his bullet out and get him ready for hanging.

Matthew Fox plays the dude Westerner Brooder, handy with his tongue as well as his gun, who has had a yearning for the lovely Samantha in the past and now pitches in to help.

The acting is uniformly outstanding, with Russell still very much up for it as a thoughtful action hero, so it would be unfair to pick out Jenkins’s scene-stealing old side-kick, Chicory. It’s a long film at 132 minutes, but every one counts, and the script feels pared to the bone.

Just a warning that this movie has horror elements in places, along with a dry witty sense of humour. With the unnerving script bristling and crackling, it is both actually funny and sickeningly scary in turns. If you like tough Westerns, you’ll love Bone Tomahawk. It’s as simple as that.

Ingeniously made in only 21 days for just $1,800,000 (which wouldn’t have paid Russell’s salary in the old days), it was shot – quite spectacularly – in Southern California. The finished film is the first draft of the screenplay, written in 2007.

Russell says about Zahler’s second novel Wraiths of the Broken Land: ‘Zahler’s a fabulous story teller whose style catapults his reader into the turn of the century West with a ferocious sense of authenticity’. And that’s exactly right about his work on the movie too.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/