#Bone tomahawk movie#

Yet even these less-than-human troglodytes are racists вЂ“ they left the black stable-boy behind, because вЂњthey donвЂ™t eat NegroesвЂќ. He is an absolute racist, but for what he considers good reasons.

For Brooder, white vs red, civilised vs savage is no different to good vs evil.

When pressed, he admits that not all were men, as Indian women and children can also handle an arrow or a spear, and he tells of losing his mother and sisters to an Indian massacre when he was ten. One of the party, Brooder, boasts of having killed more Indians than all the rest of the town put together. They are accused of raping and killing their mothers and, worse yet, abducting and raping white women, requiring the gallant sacrifice of heroes such as depicted here. In this film, this second group is distilled into a people so inhuman that they do not even have language, which is often the first thing quoted in defining the supposed gulf between humans and other animals.

#Bone tomahawk movie#

Even in the era when this movie is set, sometime in the late nineteenth century, some Native Americans like the Professor were accepted as, if not equals, at least semi-civilised negotiating partners, while others, who maintained their resistance, were considered bloodthirsty savages, and portrayed as killers, rapists and sometimes cannibals. The settlers in areas like the old West hated the вЂIndiansвЂ™ for defending their lands, which the white men wanted. Most racists donвЂ™t hate everyone, or at least not equally. When the rest of the gang comes in the night and steals their horses, Brooder is incredulous that his horse would allow a Mexican to ride her.Дiscrimination, be it racism, speciesism, ageism, ableism or any other, is never all-encompassing. Even the horses were supposed to be racially intolerant. Inferior, backward, savage peoples were meant to get out of the way, or be exterminated. Manifest destinyВ was a widely held cultural ideology that proposed that the culturally and racially superior American settlersВ were destined to expand acrossВ North America. вЂњMr Brooder just educated two Mexicans on the meaning of manifest destinyвЂќ.

On the long ride out to the land of the trogs, they come across two Mexicans and Brooder kills them, suspecting that they are scouts for a bandit gang. Most of the film, until the climax when they meet the trogs, is more a road movie than a Western or a cannibal horror film. The Sheriff, his вЂњback-up deputyвЂќ and comic relief, Chicory (Richard Jenkins from Six Feet Under and Shape of Water), the mysterious Indian-fighter Brooder (Matthew Fox from Party of Five and Lost) and SamanthaвЂ™s husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson from Fargo) with a broken leg that is fast turning gangrenous, set out in pursuit. The local Indians call them вЂњtroglodytesвЂќ, cave dwellers, They are a tribe with no name, no language (i.e. We assume Indians, but a Native American they trust, вЂњthe ProfessorвЂќ (Zahn McClarnon, from Longmire and Fargo), tells them these are not the вЂњIndiansвЂќ, or at least the ones with whom the American invaders have been at war. She, the drifter and a deputy are all abducted during the night вЂ“ the only evidence is an arrow in the wall, and a dead African-American stable boy.

A drifter comes into town and Hunt shoots him when he tries to run from the saloon, necessitating Samantha (Lili SimmonsВ from Banshee), who practices medicine, to treat him in the jail. And the graphic nature of its climax.Д«one Tomahawkis set in a small town in the last days of the Old West, a frontier society held together by a sheriff, Franklin Hunt, played by Kurt Russell (who managed to fit in a starring role in TarantinoвЂ™s The Hateful Eight that year as well), with an understated calm and a brooding power. Although a low budget work by a first-time film-maker, the film has been widely recognised for the excellence of the script and direction, and the characterisation by a team of top actors. This is a cannibal film, also a Western and a horror movie, so it has something for (almost) everyone.