I’ve been putting this one off, so let’s get it over with. Let
me know if I succeeded in at least making the review entertaining to read. Oh,
and there are a few spoilers hidden in here.
The name drew me in. A horror movie set in the late 19
century West that wasn’t a Native American slaughter fest. Oh, and it has Kurt
Russell, looking very fine. The name is evocative of something faintly romantic.
Interestingly enough, “Bone Tomahawk” is, at its core, a love story of sorts.
What lengths would you go to, what hardships and challenges would you endure,
to save the person you love? In the case of Arthur O’Dwyer, it would be quite a
lot.
That said, this is NOT a good movie. It’s also not a BAD
movie. It is an okay movie that’s problematic. And the more I think about it,
the more problems I find. If this were a short story I was beta reading for a
friend, my red ink pen would be out of ink.
Okay, let’s get into the plot. Bad men rob and murder a
small group a few days outside of town (Bright Hope), trespass on forbidden
land, and only one survives to make it into town. There he arouses the
suspicions of the local “backup” deputy, gets himself shot and carted to jail.
The next morning, he’s missing, along with the actual deputy and local woman
who’d been tending his wound. Trigger the entrance of the movies token Native
American (played by the incredible Zahn McClarnon) character, and the formation of a very small rescue party to go
onto said forbidden territory – seriously, the actual Native tribes in the area
avoid it because the cave dwellers (Troglodytes) there are so murderous (and
cannibalistic) that they know better.
And for the next hour and a half you get four white dudes
wandering around in the dessert scrub breathing heavily. (There is a very
sparse score for this thing.) Their horses are stolen just a couple of days out
by some Mexican bandits, so they decide to continue on foot. Oh, and I forgot
to mention that Mrs. O’Dwyer’s husband is in the rescue group? With a broken
and splinted tibia? Yep. I think that’s where most of the horror is in this
movie, as anyone ever on a pair of crutches can attest to. And he’s only got
ONE.
The husband gets into an altercation with one of the other
rescuers and compounds his broken leg, so he’s left behind. The others go on
and, of course, get caught. By this point we’re now down 2 rescuers – one is
killed by the Trogs – and two cannibals. The sheriff and his backup deputy are
tossed in a cage up in a cave up on the hillside, where they find the wife and
the actual deputy, who dies shortly thereafter in a VERY graphic and gruesome
manner and is eaten by the Trogs.
The very lame, yet determined, husband saves the day. Although
they do lose the sheriff. They do not show them getting back to town, probably
because there is no way they’d make it without provisions or horses. And even then,
he was probably going to lose that leg, at the very least. It says something
right there about the movie – those were my final thoughts about things.
And you would think that it would be building towards the
big climax and the final encounter with the Troglodytes. But nope. The ending
moves at about the same pace, only now we can at least enjoy how clever O'Dwyer
is as he looks at the evidence of what maybe happened around him and then
thinks it through. He’s also the one to note something that looks like jewelry
implanted in the throat the Trog he first kills. That proves rather crucial to
his survival overall, but so does his taking a few moments to plan and not just
charging in like the others have done. But, while this makes me appreciate his
character a little more, it still does nothing to wake me up and make me sit on
the edge of my seat in anticipation. Nothing in this movie manages that.
Another problem I picked up early on is, well, the Indian
problem. The movie does use the term Indian, which would be in keeping with
terminology for the 1890s, so that didn’t really bother me too much. (It might
some folks who are of Native American descent, but as far as I know, I don’t
fit into that category. Nor can I speak for everyone, even if I wanted to. I
sadly only remember ONE Native American in the entire movie – The Professor, or
Tall Trees, towards the very beginning of the movie. The Professor must be
nickname for our lone Native American, although he’s presented as cultured and
learned. I suspect that’s more of a nod to modern sensibilities. *One member of
the rescue party is a known “Indian Hunter” and boasts of how many he’s killed –
including women and children. He gets called out on it by the rest of the
rescue party, but his reasoning is that Native Americans killed his mother and
sisters, so it’s all justified. The others just seem to nod or shrug, and they
move on.) The Professor points out that his people don’t recognize the Trogs as
Native, but the people he’s talking to will, because we lump them all together.
And that’s pretty much how it goes.
The movie also makes broad use of stereotyped characters,
but the quality of the acting, and the actors, helps mitigate some of my
frustration over it. Regardless of whatever else I think about this movie, the
acting is excellent. So is cinematography. It’s another beautiful movie to
watch. Id’ say those are the plusses.
More negatives: the Trogs are wiped out, but at a high cost.
Only half of the rescue party makes it out, and with only half of the captives
they went to rescue. And the Trogs did have to “blind crippled pregnant women”
as part of their group. Those women are just left there – they are neither
harmed nor killed by the rescuers. So, in the end, it was all to save one white
woman, upon whom I’m sure the irony isn’t lost as she is the only one who seems
to have any sympathy for the Trog women.
Some point out that the movie’s message is about how generally
bad decision making and stupid actions cost more lives on the frontier than
anything else. I’d say that’s true, but it doesn’t excuse the sloppy
storytelling. I mean, true, they had no idea what was happening to Mrs. Dwyer,
but it would have made so much more sense to gather a properly-sized group of
people to go deal with the Trogs. And yes, eradication would not have been a
bad thing, given their viscousness. They killed White, Hispanic, and Native
alike.
I’m still not sure how the Trogs survived long enough to even
be known. Seriously, 12 men and only 2 women, who need at least a minimum of
tending to since they’d been crippled. This is not a group of people looking at
long-term survival as an ongoing concern. Also, they apparently had a fire, but
didn’t bother to cook their food – including the deputy.
There are plenty of other problems, but I’m going to stop
here before this gets much longer. Seriously, given the talent and the germ of
the story idea, I expected so much more. It would have been nice to see more Native
American involvement with the rescue, even if it was to swoop in at the end and
help the survivors get back to town.
I feel like some said how about a movie with a tribe of
cannibals, but we set it in the American West? And someone else said F’yeah,
let’s do it! And then either no one read the story looking for obvious gaps in
information, or it got lost on the cutting room floor. Perhaps the reason Mrs. O’Dywer
is a backup doctor in town fell to the film editor in exchange for 15 seconds
of men wandering around in the scrub. We’ll never know. But it would have been
a much better movie if someone had asked a few more questions about what was
going on…and why. And as glorious as Kurt Russell is, 90 minutes plus of him
wandering around in West for 45 minutes is too long.
From a gaming perspective, there are a several Western and
Weird West settings out there for various systems. And let’s be honest, at
least in our home games, political correctness doesn’t always come into it if
it interferes with our fun. And that’s fine as long as no one gets offended at the
table. Part of the fun of gaming is trying on different hats and types of
roles. So go ahead, add in a quest to rescue someone or something from a tribe
of overly violent, murderous cannibals in some caves in the desert. Have at.
Just please don’t let me know you made the definitely Native American without a
really good reason. Figure out a way to turn the tried, cliched trope on it's head. Oh, and don’t have your characters spend that much time on
travel. We all know there’s no need unless there are some serious encounters
happening. Otherwise, your plays will all be asleep on their dice.
If I were awarding stars for this, I’d give it 3 out of 5,
but one of those stars would be just for Kurt Russell’s hair. Sorry.
If you’d like to see what other movies I’ve got on my
schedule this month, check out my post here. And if you’d like to play along,
check out Pun’s blog, Halls of the Nephilim, for his daily theme suggestions.
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