Extreme violence, with heavy gore and blood. Kidnapping and torture. A man is split in half. Shooting with guns and arrows. Throat slicing. Head bashing. Blood splatters. Dead bodies. Disturbing images (pregnant women with limbs cut off and blinded, wooden stakes in their eyes). An injured leg, with harrowing, wince-inducing moments of pain. Gory surgery, people removing bullets, setting broken limbs. Belly sliced open, hot metal flask inserted into cavity. Severed fingers and heads. Brief, suggested male nudity as a man is tortured and killed. Scalping. Shooting injured horse (off screen). Punching. Cannibalism.
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Characters team up and show bravery and determination, facing a potentially lethal situation to rescue a loved one. On the other hand, the movie takes a negative view of non-white characters.
Positive Role Models
very little
The male characters show teamwork and bravery but are also violent and sometimes reckless. A smart, resilient female character in a smaller role works as a doctor.
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Bone Tomahawk is an unusual Western with some gruesome parts. The brutal, gory violence includes slicing, digging into wounds, severed limbs and body parts, shooting with guns and arrows, dead bodies, and other grisly things. A woman is kidnapped, and characters are tortured (one torture scene includes partial male nudity). There's also a sex scene with partial female nudity and some brief innuendo. Language includes "son of a bitch" and "goddamn." Characters drink during a bar scene, and liquid opium is part of the plot. This one is only for people looking for something different, although adventurous viewers may find a new cult favorite. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
All you have to do to let you kid watch this masterpiece of a movie is skip or make them close there eyes on the sex scene and the scene were they rip a man apart.
Very cool and very unusual film - it manages to both be a Sergio Leone western and a Eli Roth horror, and incredibly pulls both off.
The gore in this film is brief but extremely intense - perhaps that's why it's so shocking; it's sudden, and escalates like a missile and then it's over. I would not recommend this film to any child, whatsoever, but very much worth watching as an adult. Just be prepared.
Gore-wise, there's a number of fingers, hands and head (singular) cut off, but this is done extremely briefly, in good daylight with little preceding menace - not much worse that you'd find in a Tarantino produced exploitation film. Two scenes amps the horror factor, one by execution, another by implication: As others have mentioned, an unflinching scalping transitions into a brutal death, with little camera cuts. It is short, however. Another scene, near the end, have the protagonists walk by two pregnant women who have been blinded and amputated. While not gory, the horror factor is real and reminiscent of scenes in The Road.
That said, the acting is superb, the story builds like a true journey into the heart of darkness. Worth a watch, for sure, just be ready.
What's the Story?
When two misfits (Sid Haig and David Arquette) disrupt a sacred burial ground, a tribe of primitive, mysterious people attacks the neighboring town, killing bystanders and kidnapping Dr. Samantha O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons). Despite his injured leg, Samantha's husband, Arthur (Patrick Wilson), is determined to rescue her. He sets out with Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell), assistant deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), and well-spoken gunman John Brooder (Matthew Fox) to find the tribe. Arthur's leg gives the men plenty of trouble along the way, especially after brigands steal their horses. But when the savages turn out to be far stranger and deadlier than anyone could have imagined, it's up to Arthur to save the day.
A debut feature by S. Craig Zahler, this feels like a potential cult favorite; it's strange and disturbing but also imaginative and surprising. It displays a rare, impressive amount of patience. Although it's a long 132 minutes, BONE TOMAHAWK's greatest strength is its pacing. No moment feels wasted, and every moment is an opportunity for greater richness of character, or to ponder the situation's rights and wrongs. The playful dialogue often takes advantage of this (listen for one monologue about a flea circus!).
Zahler has a gift for the unexpected and manages to get in many sudden twists. But he doesn't shy away from intense moments of pain and suffering; Arthur's injured leg in particular causes many wince-inducing sequences. Also, the evil natives are painted as monsters without much chance to seem human; it's a white, Western, outsiders' view of "the other." Bone Tomahawk definitely isn't for fans of the mainstream, but for the adventurous, it's worth a look.
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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
