Steven Craig Zahler

In Bone Tomahawk (2015), men on a rescue mission find time to disagree, irritate one another and talk around the business in hand. Zahler lets those exchanges wander instead of making each speaker compete for the cleverest line. The awkwardness helps us distinguish men whose company we would enjoy from men we would merely tolerate. It is a good western, and spending time with the travelling companions gives the horror a reason to matter. We were upset by the horror because those funny, awkward conversations had given us people to worry about.

Bone Tomahawk was his directing debut. He wrote and directed Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017), a prison-crime drama starring Vince Vaughn, then Dragged Across Concrete (2018), with Vaughn and Mel Gibson. The settings changed, but extended stretches of ordinary or procedural business remained part of his method. Long takes and static framing allow him to hold on to details that a brisker genre film might cut. Sudden brutality interrupts that patient attention, and the violence is graphic enough to put some viewers off entirely.

In Bone Tomahawk, editors Fred Raskin and Greg D’Auria understand how a pause can make an ordinary remark funny. Richard Jenkins's conversations are the strongest argument for their generosity. Jeff Herriott and Zahler's restrained music leaves room for the voices instead of continually announcing trouble. The humour gives the men something to do besides explain the rescue mission, and it is where Zahler's affection for them comes through most clearly.

Not every pause earns its place, though, and the pursuit in Bone Tomahawk keeps taking its time after the men's differences have been established. We would shorten the journey before losing much of Jenkins's dialogue. At 133 minutes, the film asks the cast to sustain stretches that the editing should have tightened. There is enough warmth and dark humour to make that patience worthwhile. Start with Bone Tomahawk, but take the warning about graphic violence seriously.