Bone Tomahawk Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Bone Tomahawk Blu-ray Movie Review

Alone in the Wild

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 30, 2015

The Western is such a root myth of American popular culture that it never disappears. It just sprouts somewhere new. Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah reinvented it in the Sixties, each in a signature style. In the Nineties, directors as diverse as Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven), Lawrence Kasdan (Wyatt Earp), Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves) and George P. Cosmatos (Tombstone) put their own revisionist stamp on the genre. In this century, series television has used that format's expansive potential to drive the Western in directions previously unexplored, whether among the foul-mouthed inhabitants of Deadwood or the contemporary citizens of Longmire. Both the Coen Brothers (True Grit) and Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained) have used their encyclopedic knowledge of film history to create different species of "meta-Westerns".

Now comes writer/director S. Craig Zahler with his debut feature, Bone Tomahawk, which has been widely described as a "genre-bending" Western but is really something different. Zahler, who is also a novelist and musician, obviously knows the conventions of genre cinema as well as anyone, but he has used that knowledge to strip away much of the familiar baggage acquired by Westerns over the years and return his story to primal elements that had become familiar and domesticated. In so doing, Zahler has recaptured a quality about the American frontier that is elemental and frightening, a kind of existential terror that is the flipside of the freedom and openness for which the Old West is so often romanticized.

As the extras on this Blu-ray release stress, Bone Tomahawk was an independent production, shot on a tiny budget in twenty-one days. It had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2015, with a limited theatrical release the following month. RLJ/Image Entertainment is now issuing it on home video.

Bone Tomahawk so effectively misdirects audience expectations that it is best experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible. To provide even an overview requires identifying main characters and describing their mission and, to that extent, the discussion below might be considered to contain minor spoilers from the film's first half hour.

The film's central device is a rescue mission by four residents of the small town of Bright Hope, who are seeking to recover several people who mysteriously disappear from the town overnight, along with a stable full of horses. Evidence left at the scene indicates that the captors are an almost mythical clan of Native American raiders who belong to no tribe and are feared even by their own kind. The local expert, known as the Professor (Zahn McClarnon, who plays Tribal Police Chief Mathias on Longmire), warns Bright Hope's sheriff, Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell), that pursuit of this clan is futile, but the Sheriff will not be dissuaded. Accompanied by his "backup deputy", Chicory (Richard Jenkins), as well as a former calvary officer named John Brooder (Matthew Fox) and a cattle driver, Arthur O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson), the Sheriff sets out in pursuit toward the barren unknown wilderness where the Professor says the clan can be found. The territory is forbidding and alien. "I know the world's supposed to be round", says Chicory, "but I'm not so sure about this part."

The four pursuers in Bone Tomahawk are distinctive and different characters. Each of them is vividly drawn, and all of them labor under different handicaps. Sheriff Hunt would rather be back in Bright Hope tending to his ailing wife (Kathryn Morris), but he is leading this rescue party, not only because it is his duty, but also because he feels partly responsible for the circumstances leading to the abduction. (The reasons are complicated.) Kurt Russell brings to the character the quiet authority of his many years on screen, making his silences as expressive as his statements. His Hunt is the film's closest equivalent to a traditional Western hero, who has seen too much violence, would prefer not to see any more, but knows that he cannot avoid it.

Matthew Fox's Brooder has the exterior of a dandy and a gentleman, which masks the reflexes of a cold-blooded killer who keeps exact count of the number of Native Americans he has slaughtered. During the Q&A following the film's premiere at Fantastic Fest, one audience member referred to Brooder as a "sociopath", but Fox's performance is far more complex and nuanced. Over the course of the film, he gradually reveals Brooder as a man of deep feeling that he keeps under rigorous control for reasons buried in his past. He is also unusually intelligent—the smartest of the group, in his own estimation—which means that he will follow Sheriff Hunt's instructions, but only so long as he agrees with them.

Patrick Wilson's O'Dwyer would normally be pegged from the outset as a hero of the story, both because he is a traditional cowboy and because he has the most personal connection to the rescue mission, since one of the captives is someone dear to him. But O'Dwyer begins the film housebound and confined to the care of his wife (Lili Simmons) with a freshly broken and lacerated leg. Only with great reluctance does Sheriff Hunt allow O'Dwyer to join the rescue party. As the exertions and challenges of the journey take their toll, with pain a steady companion and fatal infection a constant threat, Wilson gives an intensely physical performance that serves to remind how the frontier was an unforgiving locale, where even minor injuries could result in death.

Perhaps the least qualified member of the posse is also the most memorable, Chicory, in a career-high performance by one of America's finest character actors. From his first scene, Richard Jenkins conveys the spirit of a man who has lost his way since his wife's death, and whose only anchor has been his hound-like loyalty to Sheriff Hunt. So crucial is his job to Chicory that he often refers to himself in the third person (as in: "It is the opinion of the Backup Deputy that . . ."). Chicory talks constantly, and he says whatever is on his mind, which often makes his companions uncomfortable, because the faithful deputy has an odd habit of speaking the painful truth at unexpected moments.

Having assembled this diverse group, director Zahler spends considerable time following their arduous trek across unforgiving terrain toward an enemy that he has shown us in a prologue (using a device borrowed from horror films) is merciless, deadly and strikes without warning. He repeatedly frames his characters in long shots, both by day and at night, emphasizing their isolation in a desolate wilderness, underlining the sheer determination required to continue pursuing a mission they have been told is hopeless and from which they will not return. One obstacle after another confronts them, and what they eventually find is every bit as horrific as they feared. By the time Bone Tomahawk reaches its conclusion, Zahler and his exceptional cast have stripped away every layer of poetry, romance, operatic excess and verbal cleverness that the Western has acquired during the last fifty years. All that remains is the need to keep moving forward, no matter how painful, and the dread that accompanies the knowledge that the land where the buffalo roamed is a harsh, cruel and capricious environment where everyone dies.

Bone Tomahawk Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bone Tomahawk was shot on Red by Benji Bakshi (Big Ass Spider!), with post-production completed on a digital intermediate, from which RLJ/Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced by a direct digital path. The image features solid, inky blacks (essential for the many night scenes), superior detail throughout, and a mostly warm color palette that emphasizes the arid desert country of the unidentified Southwestern region where the film takes place. (All of the locations were located within thirty miles of Los Angeles.) Of particular note is how DP Bakshi used the advantages of digital cinema to create tableaux at substantial distances from the characters, even at night, showcasing their isolation against vast empty spaces, without losing focus on any element in the scene. Achieving the same effect on film would require tricky lighting gimmicks and photochemical manipulations that still might never look as a clean and direct as the same effect with Red photography.

RLJ/Image has mastered the 132-minute film on a BD-50 with an average bitrate of 21.00 Mbps, which isn't bad for digitally originated cinema, especially given the letterbox bars and the many scenes where the camera holds steady on an expanse of landscape.

Bone Tomahawk Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bone Tomahawk's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, is not flashy but it is effective. The mix provides an immersive sense of the environment, with gusting winds, blowing sand, the rustling of trees and dry grass, animal sounds in the night, and numerous other effects tailored to specific scenes that cannot be described without spoilers. Gunshots are not plentiful, but they sound powerfully with deep bass, and they often reverberate to the back speakers. The dialogue is always clear. The spare score is by Zahler and his musical partner, Jeff Herriott, who have a heavy metal band called Realmbuilder.

Bone Tomahawk Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Bone Tomahawk (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:04): This is an unusually informative EPK containing interviews with Zahler, all of the principal cast and several key crew members. Both the interviews and the footage on-location capture the enthusiasm of everyone involved in the project.



• Deleted Scene (1080p; 2.38:1; 2:30): This scene would have been included at the end of the film. Although the reason for its removal is not provided in a commentary or other accompanying material, I suspect it was deleted for being too traditional in both tone and substance.



• Fantastic Fest Q&A with the Director and Cast (1080p; 1.78:1; 34:40): Zahler, Fox, Jenkins, Wilson and producer Dallas Sonnier answer a wide range of questions from the panel moderator and audience.



• Poster Gallery (1080p): Seven images, including five "character" posters.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.38:1; 2:37): "Death Waits for No Man."



• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Dark Was the Night, Pay the Ghost and Odd Thomas, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Bone Tomahawk Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In the Fantastic Fest Q&A, Zahler stresses that he did not make Bone Tomahawk as a horror film, even though parts are intended to frighten the audience. Anyone expecting a traditional gorefest will be disappointed, because Zahler is more interested in exploring character than filling the screen with blood. Bone Tomahawk contains several gruesome scenes that probably would not survive intact for the film to obtain an R rating, but they are merely exclamation points. Far more memorable is the deliberate and suspenseful buildup to those intense moments, as four isolated men confront their inner demons under a vast and lonely sky. Highly recommended.