Movie | Bone Tomahawk | Liked It

Hmm. What an interesting movie.

We’ll just rope this doggie in right now and tell you that we didn’t love it. Sorry if that missed the spittoon and hit your boot but that’s the darn truth. Was it a bad film? No, far from it; the production, acting and script were excellent. So what went wrong at Twistern Ranch when we watched it?

Well, while the actors did a fine, fine job, there wasn’t much in the way of building up a strong liking to any of them, with the possible exception of Richard Jenkins’ character, Chicory, who was simply marvelous. There just wasn’t any connection to be had and we didn’t get enough back stories to connect. Or maybe it was the pacing; long scenes, shot with a wide lens, little camera movement and sparse editing contributed to not only a building sense of dread, which was a good thing, but also a creeping boredom, which was distinctly a bad thing. And though the sound production was superb, it may be our modern sensibilities rearing back like an untamed pony when we say we were perturbed by a lack of musical accompaniment. It would have helped the mood, building it in spots and signaling to the viewer when we were supposed to be nervous…but not quite yet, hold on, it’s coming and it’s going to be a bad one. That was not to be; instead, it felt like they forgot to put it in or didn’t have a budget for it. This movie should have had a grand, sweeping soundtrack or something weird, maybe by a master of sound like Phillip Glass or some such cowpoke. The sound effects of the gunshots were particularly awesome, though. We’d like that as our smartphone ringtone, if we had one (we don’t; we use the pony express).

The violence was abrupt, viscous and ultravirile. There were a couple of scenes that really made us shiver in our boots and cover Bessie the Cow’s eyes. You’ve been warned and say we didn’t warn you.

Back to the pacing; it was so slow, that the film didn’t really pick up until the final half hour, which was fine except the entire movie is over two hours long. This was writer and director S. Craig Zahler’s first foray into feature-length film and despite our reservations detailed above, it was an impressive outing and we’re looking forward to more from him in the future. Considering that the entire movie was shot in roughly a month for $1.8 million…well, that’s just plain amazing.

But here’s the real scoop on the horror-western “Bone Tomahawk”…a big-name cast with a slick production made for comparatively little money…will it make money? We hope so and we hope this is a sign of more horror-westerns to come (don’t hold your breath)! While we didn’t find it finger-lickin’ good and we’re still split on whether we actually liked it, you might give an arm and a leg to sink your teeth into another well done Twistern. Just don’t expect to split a rib laughing at this dead serious film.