Bone Tomahawk

More than once in the special features to Bone Tomahawk the producers say they filmed the first draft of the script, and did so with a much reduced budget in order not to give away control. The director and writer S. Craig Zahler (what does the S stand for?) has apparently sold over two hundred scripts to Hollywood (without seeing one made!) so you'd expect he could turn a half decent one out in his sleep by now, but even so, Bone Tomahawk is definitely evidence against Hemingway's maxim that the first draft of everything is shit.

The lack of budget is obvious in hindsight. The action takes place in a limited number of small sets and tight locations with simple camera setups and few extras, giving the whole film a stage-play feeling. The weather, which should almost be a character itself in the arduous journey across empty badlands, is noticeable only by it's absence.

They must have been very clever with the money they had: S. Craig is also a cinematographer and nothing looks cheap. The actors are top notch, and well cast. The sets are simple but look genuine and lived in. The fight scenes (no CGI! They used arrows on wires just like Kurosawa) look perfect. The one big gory effect is especially effective.

You ignore big Ern' at your peril though. Could the film have benefited from a rewrite or two?

S (can I call you S?) has drawn his characters with a broad brush to be sure. A grizzled sheriff. A sweet old man. A viscous dandy. A rough cattleman who may not use no highfalutin' city words but is brave and loyal to a fault. These are archetypes but that is not necessarily a bad thing. In a genre film (a genres film!) it may even be necessary. It is hard to see what else he could have done.

For if S has drawn them with a broad brush he has done so very deftly. Nobody in the movie is ever less than interesting, and it is chock full of fun little character moments, from a sex scene that is not only funny but genuinely tells you something about the lovers' relationship, to the very final shot where the old man discards his makeshift weapon in an act of complete trust in the sheriff.

There are moments though where I think a second draft might have helped: The locations never quite achieves the sense of pioneer-town isolation wanted. Relationships with the other townspeople are hinted at but never expanded upon. The mood as the party approach the Indian hideout, which should be growing darker, remains strangely quirky and light even as they are being attacked by murderous brigands.

Twice items are set up but come to nothing. A much discussed telescope never shows anybody anything of interest; and most jarringly, dynamite, which the audience is first told of at the start of the second act, reminded of at the end of it, never explodes. Perhaps this was a budget issue where they were going to blow something up but decided too late they could not afford to. It feels to me more like a first draft issue though. The writer equipping himself with some ready device and then never actually needing it.

I had assumed, when the producer said he was adamant they would not give away any creative control, he was worried about financiers trying to tone down the horror. And it is truly horrible. Not so apparently; in a different interview S tells an audience at a film festival he wanted to avoid jumpy editing and a heavy metal soundtrack (and him a heavy metal musician too!). Bone Tomahawk is such a delightfully clever, quirky, inventive little film, and so unusual, and still so brutally harrowing when it wants to be, I am certain whatever they lost to keep control, it was worth it.