Bone Tomahawk

Bone Tomahawk is the début feature from the prolific novelist, screenwriter, songwriter, musician, critic, cinematographer, and director S. Craig Zahler. Already a major player in genre fiction with multiple screenplays in development, Zahler will surely be a force to reckon with in cinema after getting this unlikely, low-budget, star-studded, unrated, 132 minute, indie western made. Blending traditional western tropes with elements of horror and lost world narratives, Bone Tomahawk tells the story of a mismatched band of gunslingers who set out to rescue a group of settlers kidnapped by an unknown race of cannibalistic savages. 

Zahler is probably the best director of actors of any filmmaker in history who started out as a cinematographer. His impressive compositions take a backseat to character relationships and subtle performance details. His leads (Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, and Lili Simmons) all work beautifully together, and practically every other role is played by an actor of some repute. But unlike most indie movies populated with star cameos, the famous faces in Bone Tomahawk barely register. This is in part because Zahler and DP Benji Bakshi abstain from close-ups, and also because each actor all but disappears into their roles. With the exception of Russell—who, like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Gary Cooper, is a movie star whose greatness lays largely in his ability to ground pictures with his well-worn and familiar screen presence—we’re treated to unexpected turns from everyone in the cast, down to the most insignificant seeming part. Even Fox, who until now has never been able to shake the persona of the virtuous doctor he played on TV’s Lost, surprises and delights as the most cultured and vain member of the posse.

Bone Tomahawk is an odd picture in terms of style and tone. It requires an audience patient enough to enjoy the languid, deliberate, art-house pacing yet warped enough to relish the blunt, uncompromising, grindhouse brutality depicted at various key points. This dichotomy is exactly why I’m sure this little movie will achieve some kind of cult status. But those expecting a simplistic genre mash-up will instead find an intelligent synthesis of disparate elements that all work in concert with each other to create something fresh.