strike-1995
Plot won't break any new ground, but dialogue and character development are inch perfect. Another great film starring Patrick Wilson, the most underrated actor in the business.
milosek
From its title, over its premise, to its casting, Bone Tomahawk is a movie that heavily relied on coolness, yet in the end, it didn't deliver it enough to make it a movie you'll end up loving. Besides a single awesome trope, there aren't any original specialties about this western, leaving it without that sense of wonder a movie with this type of premise needs to have. That it somehow promises it will have. It's like if Mad Max: Fury Road only had 5% of its weirdness, of its originality. And it seems like it could've been a Fury Road for westerns. Yet the makers didn't have enough creativity or bravery to step on the imagination paddle. Almost like they didn't care to.Only one character doesn't feel like a stereotype, and while the acting is on point for the majority of the time, the generic sentences drown out the unique exchanges just with their sheer numbers. You do end up caring about the outcome, which is why the third act is so disappointing in the end. Other thing that didn't help is that music is missing from the film completely, probably due to the director's inexperience. This is a movie that will surely be remade in 20 to 30 years as it had mass potential but misfired.Only for the hardcore western enthusiasts.
Páiric O'Corráin
Bone Tomahawk. This film has some usual Western tropes: Indian Sacred Burial Site desecrated, Indians abduct a Deputy Sheriff and a Doctor, The Pursuit.But this is no ordinary Western, the Native-Americans involved are Cannibals. Another Indian describes them as Troglodytes, cave dwelling inbred Cannibals (maybe they earlier abducted members of the Bean Clan).This is both a Savage Western and a Cannibal Holocaust film. People are butchered alive, decapitated, limbs severed. Yet another film to be avoided by the faint-hearted and squeamish. 8.5/10.
The Movie Diorama
Now y'all know westerns are my least favourite type of film. I find them slow, monotonous, boring and unmemorable. They just don't appeal to me. Suffice to say, I am pleasantly surprised by this. A drifter desecrates an ancient burial ground that belongs to a cannibalistic tribe. Captured by the local sheriff, a young woman is abducted in the crossfire and it's up to some residents to rescue her. We've got horses aplenty. Desolate wasteland landscapes. Enough facial hair and hats to supply a drag cabaret show. And...we have a scene where a guy is stripped, scalped and ferociously sliced in half. What. The. Actual. Flip? I loved the third act. Adored it even. It felt fresh, exciting and packed full of grit. The practical makeup effects were flawless, looked incredibly natural. So realistic and extreme, that I squirmed not once, not twice but thrice! The sheer brutality and gore is something you would find in a Tarantino flick. I found the acting to be rather good actually. Kurt Russell and Patrick Wilson held the film together, but the stand out was Richard Jenkins who I didn't even recognise. Fantastic makeup. Matthew Fox also delivered a good performance. The characters themselves were not always interesting or captivating, but their interactions with each other felt authentic. The occasional banter assists in the surprising comedic undertone within the screenplay. A noteworthy directorial debut from Zahler. However, as with all westerns in my opinion, the pace is like a rollercoaster. A ten second kill is followed by ten minutes of wandering the wilderness. A one minute stand off is followed by a ten minute camping story. Exciting, boring, compelling, uninteresting. It might just be me and my dislike towards these films, but the first two acts couldn't escape the inconsistent pacing that is all too typical from westerns. Having said that, Bone Tomahawk is intelligent in its execution. The bloody third act alone saves this from being forgettable.