After starring in one classic western with the old-school gem the best western that Russell has starred in since Tombstone is S. Craig Zahler’s grisly horror movie Bone Tomahawk. It’s interesting to contrast the two, because they couldn’t be more different: one is a traditional western through and through, while the other throws the genre playbook out the window.
While Tombstone does feature plenty of violence and death, it’s depicted in a tasteful way. The movie feels very much like a traditional western; it’s a throwback to an era of Hollywood and the genre that, even by 1993, didn’t really exist anymore (albeit with some refreshing modern updates). Bone Tomahawk, on the other hand, is an incredibly brutal, dark, ultraviolent neo-western mashed up with gory horror that challenges the norms of what the genre can be. Russell is just as captivating and charismatic in both, but tonally, stylistically, and narratively, these two westerns couldn’t have less in common.
Tombstone Is A Classic Western, Despite Being Made In The 1990s
Tombstone Feels Like It Could've Been Made In The Golden Age Of Hollywood
Released in 1993, Tombstone is a biopic of Wyatt Earp covering all the key events from the iconic American lawman’s life, from the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral to the Earp Vendetta Ride. In the role of Earp, Russell leads a star-studded ensemble that also includes Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp, and Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo. Tombstone was widely praised for its perfect pacing, powerful performances, and stunning cinematography. Kilmer’s turn as Holliday has been lauded as one of the most memorable performances in movie history.
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In the ‘90s, the western genre’s heyday was long gone. Throughout the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, at the dawn of the New Hollywood movement, anti-westerns like McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had deconstructed the tropes of the genre, broken down the unrealistically black-and-white good-versus-evil morality, and left the traditional western in the rearview mirror. The biggest hit westerns of the ‘90s, like Unforgiven, were similarly bleak deconstructions of the genre’s conventions. But Tombstone was different — it wasn’t a brutal deconstruction of the classical western; it was an affectionate throwback to it.
Despite being made in the ‘90s, Tombstone looks and feels like it could’ve been made in the ‘50s at the height of the genre’s popularity.
Despite being made in the ‘90s, Tombstone looks and feels like it could’ve been made in the ‘50s at the height of the genre’s popularity. The acting has a delightfully old-fashioned clip to it, the cinematography has the static framing and traditional camera setups of an old Hollywood classic, and the story’s standard ethics of good versus evil — the lawmen versus the troublemakers — feels like a refreshing return to a simpler time. In an age when westerns were striving to modernize the genre, Tombstone arrived looking like a product of the Golden Age.
Kurt Russell's Bone Tomahawk Challenged What Western Movies Could Be
Bone Tomahawk Brought A Level Of Gore That Had Never Been Seen In Westerns Before
Released in 2015, Bone Tomahawk is a unique genre cocktail that brings the gruesome thrills of the horror genre into a traditional western — it’s like The Searchers meets Saw. Russell plays Sheriff Franklin Hunt, who leads a posse across the frontier in search of three people who were kidnapped from his small town by a Native American clan. As they arrive in the desolate region where these poor souls have been taken, they’re horrified to learn that this clan is full of cannibals who are hungry for human flesh, and they might not make it out with their lives.
Bone Tomahawk marked S. Craig Zahler’s directorial debut.
Bone Tomahawk wasn’t the first western to feature horrific, blood-soaked violence. Sam Peckinpah had featured an abundance of fake blood in his rough, gritty revisionist western epic The Wild Bunch in 1969. The surrealist spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci are defined by being much more violent than the classical westerns that inspired them. The latter’s seminal 1966 gem Django culminates in its title character picking off the bad guys by pushing his trigger against his lover’s gravestone with broken fingers. But Bone Tomahawk took the violence further than even Leone, Corbucci, and Peckinpah did.
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There’s a truly disturbing scene in Bone Tomahawk in which one of the cannibals rips a person in half right down the middle, and Zahler shows the whole thing in all its horrifying glory. By bringing another genre into the mix, Bone Tomahawk proved that the hundreds of previous westerns had only scratched the surface of what could be done within the genre. In the years since, movies like Brimstone and The Pale Door have brought the relentless terror of the horror genre into the traditional construct of a western.
Tombstone Is Better Than Bone Tomahawk, But Both Are Great Westerns
Tombstone Is One Of The Finest Westerns Ever Made
While Tombstone is better than Bone Tomahawk — it’s one of the finest westerns ever produced — they’re both great entries in the genre. Tombstone has all the hallmarks of a classical Golden Age western, but with a few refreshing modern touches, like speeding up the pace and giving the female characters some agency. It has some of the best acting in the western genre and the cinematography and set design bring 1880s Arizona to life.
Tombstone Ending Explained
'90s classic Tombstone ends with Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) and Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) finding both justice and redemption on the American frontier.
There’s plenty of shock value in Bone Tomahawk’s gory violence, but that’s not all the movie has to offer. The scenes of the posse traveling across the frontier into the clan’s territory give the audience a chance to really get to know the characters. Not only does this make it all the more horrifying when those endearing characters start getting picked off; it ensures that Bone Tomahawk feels like a proper western, a la The Searchers or The Cowboys. Even if the horror elements were removed, it would still be a great western.
Tombstone & Bone Tomahawk Prove Kurt Russell Is An All-Time Great Western Actor
Russell Is Up There With John Wayne & Henry Fonda
Although Kurt Russell has only starred in a handful of western movies, Tombstone and Bone Tomahawk alone are enough to solidify him as one of the all-time great western actors. By proving he can play both a traditional western hero and a darker, more ambiguous antihero, Russell has ed the ranks of John Wayne and Henry Fonda. The contrast between Wayne’s performances in Stagecoach and True Grit, and Fonda’s performances in My Darling Clementine and Once Upon a Time in the West, are comparable to the differences between Russell’s two best westerns.
Tombstone
- Release Date
- December 25, 1993
- Runtime
- 130 minutes
- Director
- George P. Cosmatos
Cast
Wyatt Earp
Val KilmerDoc Holliday
WHERE TO WATCH
Tombstone chronicles legendary marshal Wyatt Earp and his brothers as they seek fortune in a prosperous mining town. Forced to confront a gang threatening the community, Earp s forces with the infamous Doc Holliday, highlighting a tense battle between lawmen and outlaws in the American West.
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Bone Tomahawk
- Release Date
- October 23, 2015
- Runtime
- 132 minutes
- Director
- S. Craig Zahler
WHERE TO WATCH
Bone Tomahawk is a Western film that follows Sheriff Franklin Hunt, who gathers together a group of fighters to save three kidnapped victims from a clan of cannibals. After the town's doctor is kidnapped along with two others, forcing the sheriff to partner with the town's Native American professor and find the tribe before it's too late.
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