Bone Tomahawk is a good movie trying really hard to be a great one. There are moments of pure genius on display at every turn, witty and poignant dialogue, achingly beautiful cinematography, but the connective tissue between these elements of greatness ultimately fails to tie them together into a perfect whole.

The story opens with a couple of one-bit crooks searching the bodies of their latest victims for valuables. A few moments later they’re set upon by Indians. One of the men is killed, but the other escapes and heads for the nearest civilization.

This opening scene represent one of Bone Tomahawk‘s biggest problems: it’s witty and memorable but not in a way that informs or impacts the larger story

The escaped man ends up in a nearby county jail after the sheriff (played by Kurt Russel) shoots him in the leg, and the local nurse Samantha Odwyer is called to fix him up. But the group of Indians that had attacked the outlaw track him to the jail, where they kidnap Mrs. Odwyer and another man and take them back to their hideaway in the mountains.

After a bit of sleuthing the sheriff learns that the Indians are a particularly nasty tribe that live several days journey by horse. The sheriff, sets out to rescue her, accompanied by Samantha’s crippled husband, a former soldier, and an old man who has nothing better to do with his life.

It’s here that the other flaws of the film begin to show through. Most of the men in the posse are cast from the same basic mold, and while there are occasional moments of deeper insight into who these people are, those moment don’t take root deeply enough to truly distinguish their characters. Their dialogue, pleasingly quirky and authentic to the period, nevertheless reads as if were all being spoken by the same man.

The welcome exception to this monotony of character is the “Backup Deputy” Chicory played with a perfect balance of humor and heart by Richard Jenkins. Chicory is an old man, who the sheriff keeps around more so he’ll have something to do, than because of any particular prowess he has as a lawman. However, despite being the eldest of the group, he also seems to be the most innocent. He’s seen the horrors of war and experienced the worst disappointments of life and yet somehow he has not been hardened by them.

Beyond the sameness of the characters, the plot becomes somewhat monotonous here as well. The movie slogs through long scenes of riding and walking and sitting around campfires. Occasional interruptions punctuate the tedium, but they are rarely interesting enough to distract us from the monotony of travel.

The complications of Arthur Odwyer’s broken leg and the theft of the posse’s horses occasionally heighten the tension, but mostly they drag out the already monotonous process of traveling to the Indian camp.

But if the wait to get to the end seems longer than necessary, the film makes up for it in a final act that takes a hard right turn into action and gory horror. This is what the audience has been waiting for, the long-withheld promise of cannibals and cowboys, and the long wait pays off in spades. The violence is brutal, the character moments impactful, and the conclusion satisfying.

Nevertheless, the fact that the “savages” they’re hunting turn out to actually be savages is somewhat problematic in the light of the United States actual conquest of the west. One character mentions having killed hundreds of Indians, including women and children, and then goes on to kill even more Indians. We’re expected to be okay with it because now these are the “bad” Indians, but to turn the Native American antagonists into inhuman cannibals in order to make our heroes seem less morally culpable is to ignore the fact that many whites of the time did see the people they were killing as inhuman monsters. Dehumanizing our fellow-man is at the root of every great human injustice, and to do it so casually here, with the barest lip service paid to the true horrors of the time is, at the very least, a tragic missed opportunity. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid the moral dilemma created by our romanticization of the American west, the movie inadvertently creates a new moral dilemma that is all the more troubling.

In spite of this, Bone Tomahawk can hardly be called a failure. It does many things remarkably well, and fans of guts and gore will not be disappointed if they can stay awake through all the walking in the wilderness. There are pieces of this film that are perfect and beautiful and true. But they’re hindered by poor pacing and homogenized characters and tainted by a problematic moral message.





Albert lives in Florida where the humidity has driven him halfway to madness, and his children have finished the job. He is the author of The Mulch Pile and A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw .

To hear more of our thoughts on Bone Tomahawk check out Episode 175 of the Human Echoes Podcast.