Bone Tomahawk (2015) on Netflix
NR20152h 12mAdventureDramaHorror
In 1890s Bright Hope, Sheriff Franklin Hunt shoots a fleeing stranger in the leg. When the prisoner and the doctor's assistant vanish that night, Hunt leads a rescue party after them.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.1/10142,511 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Brigands Purvis and Buddy come upon a Native American burial site and are ambushed; Buddy is killed, and Purvis escapes to the town of Bright Hope, where he buries his loot. Deputy Chicory reports what he saw, and Sheriff Franklin Hunt questions Purvis, shooting him in the leg when he tries to flee. Hunt dispatches the gunslinger John Brooder to bring the doctor, but Brooder returns with Samantha O'Dwyer, the doctor's assistant, whose husband Arthur has an injured leg. She and Deputy Nick stay behind to tend the prisoner. A stable boy is murdered that night, and Hunt finds his office empty, an arrow left behind. The Professor identifies the arrow as troglodyte work, warning that the tribe are inbred cannibals other native peoples shun. Hunt sets out with Chicory and Brooder, and Arthur insists on joining.
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Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Because Russell was also involved in The Hateful Eight at about the same time, he had to look different in the two films: "I had to cheat it. So the look I have in Bone Tomahawk was sort of a halfway house thing, halfway to where I was going for Hateful Eight."
- Experts told Zahler before filming that shooting could take sixty days and cost $10 million, yet principal photography occurred over 21 days at the Paramount Ranch in California, after the crew had scouted New Mexico, Utah and Romania.
- Development started when Zahler's friend and manager Sonnier recommended adapting Zahler's Western novel Wraiths of the Broken Land; realizing that could not be done on a low budget, Zahler wrote a rescue Western instead.
- When selling the movie to investors, Zahler used John Cassavetes, Larry Clark, Wong Kar-wai and Takeshi Kitano as stylistic reference points, despite none of them being filmmakers in the Western genre.
SPOILER
Bone Tomahawk is well known for its violent scenes in the troglodytes' cave, most notably the moment when Nick is mutilated and torn in half by the cannibals.- Manchester Metropolitan University professor Matthew Carter accused the film of perpetuating racist stereotypes against Native Americans, arguing that its story is informed by "one of white America's oldest and most paranoiac of racist-psychosexual myths: the captivity narrative".
- Kurt Russell's agent handed the script to Peter Sarsgaard, who enjoyed it and signed on to the movie, which led to him passing the script on to Russell himself.
- The troglodytes' cave was shot in California, at a place that had also been a setting in the TV series Weeds and the 2008 movie Iron Man.
