S. Craig Zahler‘s shocking Bone Tomahawk (2015) is such a grungy, gory and searing Western that no one in the film is decent.  Right?  Wrong.  Most (but not all) of the white people here are basically decent enough.  Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell) is good to his wife, his deputies and others, in addition to being manly and brave.  Bravely does he search for the wife of another admirable man, Arthur (Patrick Wilson), after said wife and one of Hunt’s associates are abducted by cannibalistic Indians, unless only the word “savages” will do.

At first the Indians murder a black boy before doing their kidnapping.  A bigoted but smart man named Brooder (Matthew Fox) joins Hunt, Arthur, and Hunt’s “backup deputy,” Chicory (Richard Jenkins), for the pursuit, eventually losing their horses but also finding the savages.  Hunt and Chicory are taken captive.  They witness a horrifying atrocity the savages do to a man.

The film lets us know that in the 1800s a physical search could be harrowing, especially if one of the searchers (Arthur) had a broken leg.  Zahler, who wrote as well as directed the movie, conveys too that the civilizers were not always civil, but whatever the case they were among the barbaric uncivilized.  They could not always survive them.  Arthur seems to be a Christian, but in fact religion in such a world doesn’t appear to stand a chance.  It does, yes, but doesn’t appear to.

Bone Tomahawk is not invariably credible.  Hunt gets clubbed without suffering a bleeding head.  And why do the seekers so easily lose their horses?  However, this is minor:  the film is artfully made and authentically acted (Jenkins and Russell are great).  Although few Native Americans went in for cannibalism, like the savages in the film they often did scalp living people, among other very cruel things.  Thus BT can be called ferociously honest.

David Mamet turned into a very interesting (if not always good) film artist, but his Heist has one of the worst plots of any movie in 2001.  Amoral and almost a potboiler, it revolves around the machinations of thieves acted by Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito and Delroy Lindo.  It boasts some excellent dialogue, however:  “She could talk herself out of a sunburn.”  The first words out of Hackman’s mouth when he and Rebecca Pidgeon are ready to pull a job are “Nobody lives forever.”  “Frank Sinatra gave it a shot,” replies Pidgeon coolly.  Peculiar language for a caper movie—which is good.  Perhaps the film should be seen just for its dialogue.

Alas, it has flaws besides plot problems, though, such as a clumsily directed sequence in which Lindo gets tough with a couple of  cheatin’ fellow robbers.

Stick with Mamet’s The Winslow Boy and even State and Main.  You’ll do better.

Cover of Heist

Val Kilmer‘s Doc Holliday in the movie, Tombstone (1993), is ailing (from TB) but cool, a clever scoundrel whose masculinity is there but couldn’t be toxic if it wanted to be.  Kilmer is pronouncedly interesting, whereas Kurt Russell (as Wyatt Earp) is not as good, albeit he has more to achieve than Kilmer.  This is scenarist Kevin Jarre‘s version of the Earp-Holliday story, shot with a sound pace and pictorial energy as it tells of gun-firing losers who try hard to be winners.  Permanent winners.

Jarre’s dialogue could be better, but his narrative is compelling.  One assumes that Earp’s wife Mattie (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) leaves the dude, as the narrator implies, before Earp begins his relationship with lovely Josephine (Dana Delany).  Otherwise the film’s ending would be immoral.

At any rate, Powers Boothe is his usual fine, gripping self as one of the “Cowboys,” a lawless gang.  Bill Paxton and Sam Elliott are satisfactory as Earp’s brothers.  One actor after another strengthens this conventional Western, well directed by George Cosmatos.

There is in the David Zucker movie, An American Carol (2010), a mediocre premise and a few limp jokes, and yet the piece generates some screamingly funny satire to boot.  It’s true satire, in fact:  the kind that upholds a particular standard of virtue as the attacks are made.

At the center is a Michael Moore-like filmmaker (Kevin Farley) who, out of deep disgust with American foreign policy (among other things), resolves to try to get the Fourth of July legally banned.  Zucker ravages contemporary liberalism, especially its apathy about jihadism and the hypocrisy, where it may be found, of liberal activists.  With hilarious exaggeration (a device of satire, of course) he swipes today’s college professors in a mocking musical sequence.

Although the film is continually right about its targets, it could stand to be a little more incisive about our wars in the Middle East and even war in general.  What’s more, it unsurprisingly smiles on “the real America”—the American populace—but, er, it must be admitted that this is the populace that voted for Obama over Romney and, in 2018, packed the House with liberals.  The real America is quite ignorant, if only in some measure.  Still, in large measure An American Carol is delightful.

I’ve always backed away from reading Allen Drury’s novel Advise and Consent because of its length, but I have now seen the Otto Preminger film adaptation and was glad I did.  It revolves around a President’s nomination of a highly controversial man as Secretary of State, and the tension between pronounced anti-Communism (of the early 60s) and the fervent desire for peace comes to the fore.  This is the fulcrum for skullduggery, including that of a felonious leftist.

Probably the film is faithful to the novel—others could tell me—since author Drury was decidedly against Communism and, here, the anti-anti-Communism which arose during the 1960s has no room to breathe.  The work is at fault for not displaying sufficient sympathy for a man who commits suicide, but at least one appreciates the gravity and evenhandedness of Wendell Mayes’s script.  Although there is too much starchiness in the acting, virtue arises as well.  Charles Laughton proves adept at playing a Southern conservative Congressman, and as politicians, Walter Pidgeon and Don Murray are no slouches either.

Advise and Consent isn’t art, but it has the advantage of being drama that makes sense.

Cover of Advise and Consent