During a shootout in a saloon, Sheriff Hunt injures a suspicious stranger. The doctor's assistant, wife of the local foreman, tends to him in prison. That night, the town is attacked and they both disappear—only the arrow of a cannibal tribe is found. Hunt and a few of his men go in search of the prisoner and the foreman's wife.
Rated 3.3 / 5 from 2 logs on Katalog
Too long and awkwardly paced, flat uninteresting and amateurish cinematography. Dialogue is a mixed bag, some conversations are laughably exposition driven but some are really genuine and relatable. Some of the acting was straight up bad, I actually felt that the main couple's relationship was intentionally portrayed as being bad despite the sex and the poem, guess I just misread it due to the lacking chemistry. The movie is very gory, which doesn't push me either way on whether I like it more or not, but I did feel like it was presented in a very neutral and non-sensational way which makes it feel more realistic, if you're into that there's one scene in this film which you'll love and probably remember forever. If you're curious but squeamish here's a description of it I found on reddit: ||The man is taken out of the cage, shoved to his knees, and the whole time he’s giving his last will to his boss (the sheriff, Kurt Russel). “Send my stuff to my brothers in Michigan”. He’s looking Kurt Russel dead in the eye, and then mid sentence, one of the monsters takes out a knife and places it at the edge of his hairline. Guy starts screaming. They slice back, towards the pate of his head, removing his hair but leaving him alive. Kurt Russel starts lying to the young man, tears in his eyes, telling him that there is a cavalry on the way, and even though there’s no chance the young man will be rescued, he will be avenged. Russel knows he, himself, is likely to die in a similarly horrible fashion soon, but is doing everything he can to make this poor young man’s last moments as good as he can. The young deputy’s hair is then stuffed into his mouth as a muzzle, and then pinned into the back of his throat with a spike. They flip him upside down, while two men take a leg each, and pull them apart presenting the groin to a third. He takes a Bone Tomahawk (an axe whose edge is made of bone) and hacks away at the man’s groin until he splits in two. The audio is unrelenting, and the violence is not shied away from in the slightest.|| Things I liked include the realistic depiction of ambushes without much cinematographic fanfare, the antagonists just show up and start attacking, or our characters will just get shot out of nowhere. Every encounter feels consequential, our "heroes" are injured and maimed permanently. Richard Jenkins as Chicory is a unique and great character, especially for a western, who completely stole the show and is the biggest highlight in the film.
