Poetic Savagery - BONE TOMAHAWK

I love cinematic juxtaposition.  A good mix-up can freshen a stale premise and give an unexpected depth to a stock character.  Take a Christmas musical and throw in a bloody zombie apocalypse and you’ve got my attention.  Turning a solitary, emotionless assassin into the accidental guardian of a precocious pre-teen leads to interesting, and awkward, developments.  What do you get when you mix a traditional Western plot, a posse of eloquently spoken, thoroughly mismatched heroes, a deliberate pace, and add a sprinkle of shocking, disturbing violence?  Take a gander at S. Craig Zahler’s 2009, character driven horror Western and find out.

The Capsule:

Deep in the untamed West, Buddy (Sid Haig) and Purvis (David Arquette), a pair of squabbling bushwalkers enjoying the free and breezy life of murdering people in their sleep, make a serious misstep when they desecrate the burial grounds of some remarkably uncivil cave dwellers.  Purvis escapes to the adorable little town of Bright Hope, where he is promptly shot in the leg by Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell).  Unfortunately, bad luck wasn’t the only thing to follow Pervis to town, and Hunt wakes to find Pervis gone, along with the deputy and Samantha O’Dwyer (Lili Simmons), an angel of mercy who was seeing to the cut throat’s injuries.  Hunt rides out in the company of his talkative, well-meaning backup deputy, Chicory (Richard Jenkins), an Indian hunting dandy named Brooder (Matthew Fox), and Mr. O’Dwyer (Patrick Wilson), who won’t let a broken leg stand in the way of retrieving his wife.  The trail is long and filled with dangers and discussions over the best way to read in the bath.  Things take a considerably darker and bloodier tone when these doomed men arrive at the home of the mutant, cannibalistic Troglodyte cave clan, who are only too eager to put those titular bone tomahawks to use.     

Opening a movie with the great Sid Haig and wack-a-do David Arquette clumsily dispatching a couple of sleeping bible salesmen is practically a welcome mat with my name on it.  Once the dastardly murderers commence to casually bickering about how many veins are in the human neck and what constitutes an unusual amount of blood, I was hooked like a trout.  I love me some highfalutin dialog, and writer/director S. Craig Zahler provides it in spades.  Like Aaron Sorkin at quarter speed or a polite Tarantino, Zahler makes his dialog punchy, well timed, and fun.  The characters’ conversational asides are as enjoyable as the main plot.  Good thing, too, since the majority of the movie’s 2 hour-plus run time is filled by either talking, traveling, or combinations of the two.  Punctuated with moments of remarkably over the top violence, of course. 

As much as I enjoyed my short time with Buddy and Pervis, it only gets better in the sleepy little berg of Bright Hope.  It may not have more than a handful of on screen residents (though Brooder boasts that eleven ladies in town have invited him for dessert), but they are all quirky and entertaining enough to have walked off a Cohen Brothers film (or TV show).  From the Learned Goat saloon’s pianist who doesn’t like playing the piano to the mayor’s overbearing wife (Sean Young!) who won’t let him get a word in edgewise, the townsfolk are distinct without being odd for odd’s sake.  The place is so charming that I was a little disappointed when the rescue plot tears the leads away.  If there was a prequel just about Chicory making his daily rounds, stopping place to place for a cup of coffeepot soup and a meandering story, I would watch it in a heartbeat. 

If we have to spend the rest of the run time with only four Bright Hopers, these four are a solid pick.  Patrick Wilson’s stoic cowboy, Arthur O’Dwyer, is the most straightforward character in the batch, though hobbling him with broken leg (from a roofing accident) gives him an unusual angle.  He spends half his time fiercely determined not to be held back by his injury, and the other in bitter frustration that it does.  At one point he is literally reduced to crawling to the rescue, the exact opposite of the cavalry.  Wilson has a bit of a young Clint Eastwood vibe, able to express great emotion with an understated performance.  I also like how O’Dwyer occasionally looks skyward and consults God like they are in radio contact.  “Are you seeing this?” 

Matthew Fox’s Brooder is more of an odd duck.  On one hand, he’s a Fancy Dan, with his fine clothes and expensive gadgets (such as “The German”, an expertly crafted spyglass that Chicory drools over as if it were a fresh baked pie).  He’s fussy, arrogant, and thinks he is smarter than everyone.  On the other hand, he’s a racist mass murderer of men, women, and presumably children.  Both sides make him a difficult character to like.  To his credit, Fox still manages to be sympathetic, especially after we learn the origin of his horribly misguided but understandable moral code.  Plus, you can’t argue with his taste in hats.

I don’t know how, but old Kurt Russell is more of a badass than young Kurt Russell.  Between this, THE HATEFUL EIGHT, and DEATH PROOF, he’s traded in his Snake Plissken swagger for a knowing, weary confidence that can wilt a lesser man.  Sheriff Hunt’s facial hair alone is enough to command respect.  As opposed to his similarly bushy character in THE HATEFUL EIGHT, Hunt is a genuinely good man, and his generous bond with Chicory is the movie’s core.  Showing emotion doesn’t mean he’s soft though.  This is still Kurt Russell we’re talking about here.  No man makes a suicide mission less suicidal than Kurt.

The movie’s MVP, though, comes in the unlikely form of mild-mannered character actor Richard Jenkins.  Chicory is like the rambling grandfather everyone wishes they had, one who never shuts up, yet is totally adorable.  He is Bright Hope’s backup deputy, which is obviously a made-up position that Hunt gave him just to give the well-meaning widower a sense of purpose.  Sort of a frontier version of a Wal-Mart greeter.  He is even less suited to a long, dangerous rescue mission than O’Dwyer, but he is essential to the movie.  Jenkins plays Chicory as scattered, but still sharp, slow but capable, and able to lighten even the direst of situations with a simple story.  I bet if the Troglodytes understood English, even they would eventually all wind up sitting around the fire, weapons forgotten, enchanted by his tale of the flea circus. 

The movie is primarily focused on these four doomed men, but Lili Simmons does a fine job with what little screen time she has.  Samantha O’Dwyer holds a position of authority in the town, providing medical service when the town doctor is drunk, which is all the time.  While most definitely in distress, she is not portrayed as a damsel.  She’s capable, speaks her mind, and is brave in the face of pretty much the scariest shit you could possibly think of.    

For a director so eloquent and heartfelt, Zahler is a brutal motherfucker.  The violence may be sparse, but it hits as hard and painful as a gut punch.  There are no such things as minor wounds.  The slightest knock results in severed fingers.  A glancing blow doesn’t just leave a scratch, it takes off a gnarly chunk of scalp.  O’Dwyer’s leg looks surprisingly mild until he eventually falls and gets a compound fracture, because a leg ain’t movie broke until the bone is sticking out.  And once we are properly introduced to our villains, the movie takes a steep dive into a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE level horror show.

These days, the classic cowboy vs. Indians trope makes for uncomfortable viewing.  True, vicious bastards exist in all walks of life, and like-minded assholes tend to group together, but casting Native Americans as the villains, knowing what we do about history, is enough to illicit a “yeah, but…” from anyone.  Zahler gets around this (sort of) by making the tribe another species altogether, a mutant strain of human with bone harmonicas growing out of their voice boxes.  The only non-mutant Native American in the cast, an erudite fellow credited as The Professor (Zahn McClarnon, Patrick Wilson’s buddy from Fargo Season 2), takes umbrage at even referring to the Troglodytes as Indians.  He’s also smart enough to stay far away from their sort, preferring to keep all his body parts properly attached.

The Trogs themselves make it clear that they want to stand apart from the crowd, even without their pan flute mutations.  They all adorn themselves in bones, spikes, and skulls.  Essentially, they are the Wild West version of MAD MAX punks.  Some, like the leader who has boar tusks pierced through his cheeks, are practically monsters.  Even their arrows are weird, looking more like alien stingers than anything humans would create. 

It’s not all show, either.  These guys commit hardcore to the mutant cannibal lifestyle.  Casually noshing on a random leg is only the tip of the iceberg with this crew.  Just ask poor Deputy Nick (Evan Jonigkeit).  He isn’t just slaughtered, he is utterly demolished.  They scalp him, stuff his scalp into his mouth, and pin it down with a large bone spike, all while alive, of course.  Then they get nasty.  If you are curious about what the worst possible way to die would look like, the wishbone scene will answer your question.

Incidentally, this is the second Western where David Arquette has been eaten by cannibals (the other being RAVENOUS).  He should stick to the East from now on.

By the final act, things have become so hopeless and one sided that the best outcome seems to be a quick death for everyone involved.  [Spoiler] Zahler is not a complete bastard, though, and the climax, while very rough, does not descend into total nihilism.  Physically outmatched in every way possible, the rescuers (and rescuee) must rely on their wits, and some fortunate timing, to get themselves out of the stew pot with most of their parts intact.  As a conciliation (?), on the way out we get to see that as bad as they had it, things could have been much worse. 

Zahler kept the juxtaposition train rolling with his excellent follow up, BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, where Vince Vahn has the soul of a poet and the fists of a wrecking ball.  That movie is a face ripper (literally), but BONE TOMAHAWK will always be the backup deputy of my heart.

C Chaka