Kurt Russell is the epitome of cool—look no further than his roles as R.J. MacReady in The Thing and Snake Plissken in Escape from New York as proof. And then, there's his portrayal of Wyatt Earp in 1993's Tombstone. Rocking a badass mustache, Russell is the hero lawman in the iconic Western, which also features riveting performances from the likes of Val Kilmer and Powers Boothe. Tombstone is one of the most popular entries in the genre, but as great as it is, it can't hold a candle to the suspense created in Bone Tomahawk. Russell returns as the good guy here, this time going up against a group of cannibals in a film that turns into all-out horror.
Bone Tomahawk is the directorial debut of S. Craig Zahler. Despite being his first time behind the camera, he had one heck of an impressive cast to work with: Outside of Russell, who is as big as it gets, the film also stars Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, and David Arquette, among many others. Like Tombstone, and even The Thing, Bone Tomahawk is a character-driven film. Zahler knows that, before he pulls back the curtain to show us all the gruesome bits, he must first get us to care about the men who are going to be prey for the villains.
Russell once more seamlessly steps into the authority role of an 1800s lawman, this time as Sheriff Franklin Hunt. When some innocent people are kidnapped by a cannibalistic tribe, it's up to Hunt and his team, made up of characters played by Wilson, Fox, and Jenkins, to track them down. Bone Tomahawk is filled with masterful acting helped along by Zahler's screenplay. Rather than creating trope-heavy characters only there to die and nothing more, he settles in with his protagonists, getting to truly know both their flaws and what makes them tick. They feel like real people inhabiting a real world. The sweeping cinematography of the rugged landscape is also a character unto itself. And with a minimal score, Zahler allows the building tension to be formed around the story, not manipulative music beats.
"You called down the thunder, well, now you've got it!"
In a 2015 interview with Collider, Russell said it was Zahler's script that got him to return to the western genre.
"I started just really enjoying his sparse -He has sparse sort of technique in his writing that I really responded to and I thought that it was an opportunity to do a movie that was in a new category. It’s its own category, I wouldn’t know what to call it. It’s not just a straight western, I’ve heard it referred to as a horror western, it’s not that, that’s kind of a bad call on it, I think. I think it’s a graphic western, I think that’s fair."
Russell has a point. Bone Tomahawk is not your traditional Western. Sure, it's set in the Old West and centers on a lawman hunting down bad guys, but it's not focused on tropes of the genre. These characters could have been dropped in any century; the late 1800s Old West is just where they happen to be. It's also not a traditional horror film per se because it doesn't live in that feeling. It could be labeled as more action and suspense for the majority of its runtime, until the last jaw-dropping act. Then, whether you want to call it horror or a graphic Western, it becomes a terrifying bloodbath.
The majority of Bone Tomahawk tricks the viewer, telling them that it is a traditional Western-type movie with some horror-centric elements. Once Russell shows up, he will take down the bad guys, perhaps losing a few friends along the way, before ultimately saving the day. But that couldn't be further from the truth; after brief moments of violence here and there spread throughout, the movie lets loose with a shocking and very bloody final act.
Zahler doesn't let the camera hold back, especially the scene where a captured Sheriff Hunt is forced to watch the cannibals as they scalp one of his friends right in front of him. The last several minutes turn Bone Tomahawk into something more akin to The Hills Have Eyes. Zahler demands us to be a part of it as witnesses. After seeing the villains here and there, we get to experience what they are truly capable of. What they do to the women they capture and keep as their prisoners is just as torturous. How is an aging Kurt Russell supposed to defeat such collective, unimaginable violence?
In his Collider interview, the actor saw the comparisons between Bone Tomahawk and The Thing, saying, "That thing was just trying to survive and that’s all these guys are doing, they’re just trying to survive, they’re just out there living." In The Thing, paranoia reigns with a monster that can take on the form of its victims. No one can trust anyone. Bone Tomahawk takes away any doubt. The monsters are right there, mere mortals who can immediately be seen for who they are. But just like The Thing, there might not be getting out alive for anyone.
