Bone Tomahawk - DVD

Bone Tomahawk is brutal. It has one of the most gruesome scenes I've ever seen put to film. The films permeates an eerie feeling that things are going to go wrong. It never ventures into the supernatural, but it has a mystical feeling while still feeling grounded. It's an excellent Western and it's definitely worth a watch if you can handle the gore.

Bone Tomahawk is an excellent western with a thriller kind of twist to it. In the beginning a criminal drifter makes a choice that sets off a horrible chain of events to follow and other good people pay the price. To me the highlight of the film was the excellent actors in it and their performances. Pleasant surprises like Matthew Fox (Jack from TV's Lost) and Richard Jenkins (one of the best character actors out there) payoff big in their supporting roles. The movie is kind of a slow burn, with bits of mild humor throughout and very authentic Western dialogue to add a bit of flair. Be warned however, the film is very graphic in it's violence, featuring one of the worst death''s I've ever seen in film. The action really picks up at the end, but I have to say I was a little disappointed with the abrupt ending considering I felt the rest of the movie was so well paced. This is a BluRay worth adding to your collection based on the performances alone, despite the slim bonus features. It can usually be found on sale at an affordable price and I think most Western fans would really enjoy it.

All of my many Blue Ray reviews focus solely upon the actual quality of the film from Standard Def DVD quality to the higher standard set for Blu Ray. Summaries of the plot and opinions of the story line and acting can be found in the majority of the other reviews so I do not want to be redundant. My rating is based solely upon the Blue Ray disc's quality and not the quality of the movie itself. That said, I enjoyed the movie very much for its humor, horror and characters. Keep in mind, however, that the quality of what you see and hear is also dependent upon the quality of the TV monitor you are watching on as well as the home theater set up you are using. The monitor I use is a fairly new Panasonic ZT 65" plasma and the amps, speakers, cables, OPPO 103 BluRay player and AVM-60 7.1 Atmos enabled Surround Processor I use are hi end esoteric gear to provide me with a more realistic and objective perspective. The Oppo player is not enabled to transcode Atomos audio so it will default to the next best audio coded, in this case, Dolby True HD 7.1 I am not trying to be a snob here, but just pointing out that what you see and hear is very dependent upon the quality of the gear you are using. VIDEO QUALITY...... Filmed on a relatively low budget, the video quality is really quite good providing fairly natural and normal skin tones and true to life color resolution and saturation. Color grading is, for the most part, shot warm but not overdone. There are many nighttime scenes and the blacks appear to go pretty deep sacrificing little detail. Small details are clearly evident throughout. Mbps rate averaged in the low 30's. I did not see any noticieable artifacts, dropouts, or grain which would not appear anyway when shot on video rather than film. AUDIO QUALITY.... When you have a low budget film it appears that the audio editing takes the hit. While the audio codec is a lossless DTS HD MA 5.1 I do not think much went into steering foley fx to their appropriate left, right, front and rear channels. Not saying that there was none but not as much as I would have expected from a film where movement and action takes a large part of the film. Dialogue was always clear and transparent and I had no issues with discerning what was being said. EXTRAS..... I do not count previews of other films as extras. They are advertisements that take up space on the disc calling for even more compression of the film you are paying for. Other than that, there was one deleted scene that would have served as a denouement to the film and I agree with the editors, best left deleted. The making of the film doc was typical but there was also a question and answer video included shot after the film was premiered at a film festival. I found this, at first and interesting way to further explore the film, but the panel consisting of the director and most of the cast, except Kurt Russell himself, turned it in to a self congratulatory waste of time with no real info provided other than patting each other's backs. I liked the film and would have given it a solid 4 stars but this 3 star rating is based upon the actual Blu Ray quality and the lack of attention to the audio mixing lowered it to the 3 stars I gave it. I do hope this has been of some help to you. Thanks for reading

A great horror with some grotesque moments. A classic western at heart with some great actors, but not for the faint of heart

This is not for everyone, but I personally think it was tremendous. It's a western, a comedy, and a monster movie rolled into one. The acting is mostly great, especially Richard Jenkins. The humor and dialogue are unique and interesting. To enjoy this movie, you need to be mentally prepared for a massive shift in tone at the end. Structurally it reminds me of Dusk til Dawn that way. This seems like a well done western all the way UNTIL... things go horribly wrong. The massive shift from western to... well, horror I guess, really generates a deep sense of how quickly things can go from normal to absolutely horrific. There is no warning or build up, just like real life can be. So much so, you start to wonder "is this really happening?" I'm sure this will turn some viewers off, especially if they were enjoying the regular old posse round-em up story. But I think the juxtaposition only drives home how awesome the movie really is. It's a wonderful risk taken by the film makers, turning this movie into anything but the normal Hollywood movie. The first 66% of the movie is necessary though, to connect us to the characters in such a way that we are right there with them at the end. One word of warning: there is one absolutely gruesome and graphic murder later in the film, like nothing I've ever seen. Again, necessary to drive home how real things have suddenly gotten for our heroes. As long as you're mentally prepared for what this movie is like, I think you'll enjoy it.