Icy Sedgwick's Blog, page 55

7 Ways To Have More Creative Ideas More Often

Everyone has ideas, but not everyone knows how to have creative ideas. You might think creativity revolves around paint or writing novels. These 7 suggestions will certainly help with arty endeavours, but they should also help you to kickstart your own creative process! Colour outside of the lines Sometimes you can get so hung up…

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World Book Day 2016 – Get your free book

It’s World Book Day 2016 in the UK and Ireland! The Day originates in Catalonia, and it’s now marked by over 100 countries around the globe. Books have been given as gifts on St George’s Day for over 80 years, and as such most countries will be holding World Book Day 2016 on 23 April. […]

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Bone Tomahawk – horror or Western?

With the success of The Hateful Eight and The Revenant, it was good to see Bone Tomahawk finally make its way onto UK screens, even if I had to go to my local independent cinema to see it. It was described to me as a weird Western, although I’d disagree with that designation. Weird Westerns generally involve an air of the supernatural, or the presence of monsters like zombies. Bone Tomahawk has neither of these.

What is DOES have is cave-dwelling troglodytes with a taste for human flesh and an apparent disregard for clothing, language and fair play. They attack the eerily quiet town of Bright Hope, stealing horses and kidnapping the deputy, the doctor’s assistant Sam (Lili Simmons) and a ne’er-do-well drifter (David Arquette). Sam’s husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson) sets off to recover them, with the help of Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell), the back up deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins) and John Brooder (Matthew Fox).

That would all be absolutely fine if Arthur didn’t have a broken leg and their horses weren’t stolen. The not-so-merry foursome are forced to follow the troglodytes’ trail on foot. Uncanny sounds penetrate the night, and eventually they find the dangerous valley that the troglodytes call home. Will they rescue Sam and the deputy, or will they get there after dinner is served?

Bone Tomahawk is essentially a quest narrative

Parts of the quest suffer from pacing problems and could have done with editing. That said, Chicory’s forgetful banter and Hunt’s no-nonsense style of speech keeps the film from swerving into boredom. Fox is a revelation as Brooder, and I had no idea he was capable of conveying emotion. Russell is, as ever, well-suited to the Western. Wilson always puts in a watchable turn; here he proves himself capable of playing a genuine heroic protagonist when he’s given enough to do. Demonstrating common sense as well as desperation, Wilson’s Arthur is a character you can actually root for.

But what of the villains of the piece, the inbred cannibals in the cave? They’re as anonymous as such characters ever are. They were bone masks, or have extra bones embedded in their faces. In a way, they look more like they belong in Mad Max: Fury Road. They’re relentless and devoid of human emotion, but they’re distanced from traditional Native groupings. True, Brooder hates Native Americans, but in the case of the troglodytes, even the sole Native in Bright Hope is quick to draw a line between his own people and those who live in the caves. The troglodytes are treated much as any other movie monster would be.

Still, I promised you horror, didn’t I?

The horror truly kicks in when the hapless party finally encounter the troglodytes. Just as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant refuses to shy away from graphic violence, S. Craig Zahler keeps the camera trained on the severed hands, fingers, and other body parts that litter the mise en scène. Someone told me that the goriest scene I’d ever see on film was in Bone Tomahawk. I’ve seen a lot worse, but I can understand why one scene in particular would make less hardened viewers more than a little queasy.

There are other similarities between The Revenant and Bone Tomahawk. There are the fraught relations between First Nation people and the white frontiersfolk. A quest narrative lies at the heart of both films. They share an intention to depict frontier life as the harsh, inhospitable attempt to eke out an existence that it likely was. However, while Iñárritu ruins The Revenant with his style over substance, Zahler’s more measured framing and deeper characterisation makes Bone Tomahawk the more satisfying watch. It’s just a shame that it didn’t get a wider release. Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson and Matthew Fox are not minor league actors, and the superior script should have seen Bone Tomahawk trump The Revenant, were it not for the presence of one Mr DiCaprio.

Should you go and see it?

I certainly think so. Bone Tomahawk proves that the Western plays well with many other genres, and in the case of horror the two make extremely friendly bedfellows! I award Bone Tomahawk 4 out of 5!

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Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan – Review

Nerine Dorman originally recommended Promise of Blood to me, and as soon as I’d downloaded the sample I knew I’d need to read the whole book. Fantasy is one of those genres that can easily tread the same old tired, worn path, but not so for Brian McClellan – yes, his book features magic and ancient gods, but it also has a more ‘Georgian’ feel to the warfare, with powder mages armed with bayonets and gunpowder. I feel like I’m a little late to the party since this came out in 2013, but that just means I can whizz onto book 2, The Crimson Campaign (2015) and then book 3, The Autumn Republic (2016).

Here’s the blurb from Amazon;

The Age of Kings is dead . . . and I have killed it.

It’s a bloody business overthrowing a king…

Field Marshal Tamas’ coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces.

It’s up to a few…

Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail.

But when gods are involved…

Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing. But they should…

In a rich, distinctive world that mixes magic with technology, who could stand against mages that control gunpowder and bullets? PROMISE OF BLOOD is the start of a new epic fantasy series from Brian McClellan.

This addition of technology into the fantasy genre is one of Promise of Blood‘s many strengths. It’s a genre-bending book, featuring a conspiracy that must be unwound using good old-fashioned detective work, mythology, fantasy and a whole heap of action along the way. Many fantasy books seem to owe a debt to Tolkien but McClellan’s work is more Bernard Cornwell – there was definitely an element of the ‘Richard Sharpe’ about the powder mages! The characters are well-rounded and flawed, and the narrative cracks along at a snappy pace, never dragging or sagging as longer works are wont to do. Definitely worth checking out if you like fantasy with a difference.

You can grab Promise of Blood from Amazon here.

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Why Should You Try Writing Pulp Fiction?

If you want to win an award for writing, you’re better off sticking to literary fiction. If you want high sales, better stick to genre fiction. But if you want to try writing something that’ll be as much fun to create as it will be to read? Then try your hand at writing pulp fiction.

This 7 point guide should hopefully get you started! Lester Dent’s four-part pulp plot will be invaluable to you. If you want to read his article about it, here’s the fuller link, and it’s well worth the visit, but I’ll give you the shorter version here.

1) You’d better start reading some pulp fiction

There are small presses dedicated to contemporary pulp tales, such as Beat to a PULP, but the Pulp Magazines Project is an open-access archive and digital research initiative that aims to study and preserve pulp magazines, including Amazing Stories, Frontier Stories and Out of this World Adventures. You can even read some of them on their website.  You can also check out ThePulp.Net for all things pulp. PulpSerenade.com is another great resource.

Bottom line is, you have to read it before you can write it.

2) Decide on your main elements before you start writing pulp fiction

Dent suggests coming up with a murder method for the villain to use, something for the villain to be seeking, a location, and some sort of menace “which is to hang like a cloud over hero”. Personally I think the formula works with other options as well; I’ve changed it to include things the villain wants to prevent, rather than seek.

Either way, knowing where you’re going to set the story helps you to come up with a murder method (maybe it’s location specific?) as well as your protagonist.

3) Split your 6000 word story into four 1500 word chunks

I know, I know, the traditional structure dictates you use three acts, but this is pulp, okay? Four quarters is perfectly fine. And before you shoot me for recommending anything formulaic, it’s when you learn to write within constraints that you really hone what it is that you’re doing.

Part 1 needs suspense, a mystery, and the hero attempts to solve the problem…but it’s too soon. He fails. Drop him into hot water – and I mean REALLY hot water. There should be a surprise twist somewhere towards the 1500 word mark.

Part 2 has more suspense, but growing menace. Pile on the trouble and the problems, give him plenty of struggles, and preferably another physical conflict. Whack in another plot twist at the end of this part. It’s in this section that you can try adding surprises to add mystery. Remember to show, don’t tell. The reader needs to feel like they’re there.

Part 3 is even more grief for the hero. You still need suspense, but now the hero needs to be making some progress. Maybe he corners the villain, or a lackey. Another physical conflict! And round out the part with another plot twist. Just remember to build atmosphere and use description – the reader should be able to ‘see’ the action!

Finally, in part 4, you pile everything you can onto the hero. It looks like everything is lost! This is the part where James Bond is strapped to the table with the laser advancing towards his privates while the countdown to Armageddon ticks down beside him. The hero gets himself out of it using some kind of skill or training. There’s a final twist, perhaps in the ‘reveal’ of who really did it, and there should be some kind of punchline.

4) Don’t think of it as prescription. Think of it as guidelines

You might be thinking that if you stick to the quarters laid out above, your story will be too rigid. No it won’t – it’ll be pulp! Just like science fiction needs particular props, and musicals need, well, music, the pulp story has a certain set of conventions too. You won’t be less of a writer for sticking to them.

And no deus ex machina!! Your hero can’t get out of trouble with a last minute intervention by someone else. He or she has to get themselves out of it. That’s why they’re the hero.

But the driving point is plenty of suspense, to keep the reader reading, and plenty of detail! The whole beauty of pulp is that readers can see the story unfolding. The minute you drop out of showing the action into telling them what’s happening is the minute they wander off.

5) Conflict is the key to pulp fiction. It drives the plot forward

When I wrote The Guns of Retribution as a pulp Western, I followed Dent’s pulp plot, and I didn’t necessarily want to provide conflict for the sake of conflict, but rather as a means for Grey to prove himself as a hero – not to himself, but to the reader. Grey will always be a hero to me – but he needs to be a hero to you, too, and the only way for him to do that is to act like one.

Conflict is the best way to keep someone reading. If your hero has nothing to do, then why should your reader care?

6) Remember that pulp is accessible

It’s always been intended to be accessible – printed on extremely cheap paper (and written by underpaid writers), the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s might contain several stories, yet only cost around 10c (around $1.60 in today’s money). If you couldn’t afford the more expensive magazines, you could probably afford a pulp title, and the stories would focus on high adventure and escapism – exactly what you’d need in the years following the Depression and the Second World War. The magazines, and their stories, were intended as mass entertainment. And that leads onto…

7) There’s nothing wrong with wanting to entertain people

When I wrote The Guns of Retribution, I wasn’t aiming for highbrow art or literary fiction – I just wanted people to read and enjoy the story, and to spend a few hours in Retribution and its surroundings. Pulp stories aren’t high literature but they get people reading, and using your imagination to picture the scene as a bounty hunter and his associates attempt to board a speeding train is far more productive than watching a Z-list celebrity act like a moron towards a bunch of other Z-list celebrities in a fake ‘house’.

Will you try your hand at writing pulp fiction, or will you consider reading it? Let me know in the comments!

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The Bounty – A Grey O’Donnell Story

This is a Grey O’Donnell story, telling the tale of how he became a bounty hunter in the first place!

My momma always told me that sometimes you just have to treat yourself to a little slice of luxury. I told myself that as I sat on the veranda of the general store, where a travelling barber lathered up my neck. I was never too keen on people being near my throat with a straight razor, but I can’t say I was too fond of growing a beard, either.

Mahko lurked in the shadows inside the store, peering out of the window to see what the barber was doing. Most folk in those parts didn’t take too kindly to having an Apache around, even if he was only fourteen, but the owner of the store let him earn a few cents by catching rats. I’d earned a few dollars helping to break in horses – it wasn’t much but damn, what else could we do? All I knew was riding and shooting.

A commotion kicked off in the street and the barber stepped away to see what was happening. I sat up in the chair and looked past him. People were coming out of the businesses of Main Street to see a guy riding into town on an Indian pony. They gasped and pointed but what else was he gonna ride? Guy was clearly an Arapaho, and no one knew ponies like the Natives.

“Somebody! Help me!” He was shouting and hollering over the excited chatter of the townsfolk. He pointed to a bundle draped across his knees. An arm swung loose – dry red rivers ran along the tanned skin.

“Well would you look at that?” The barber turned to me and gestured over his shoulder. The Arapaho drew level with the general store, and I stood up behind the barber. He wiggled a way a little – I guess some men get threatened by six feet and two inches of armed stranger.

“Help me!” The Arapaho got agitated, and started wailing in his saddle. The wooden box opposite the general store was the sheriff’s office, and it wasn’t long before Sheriff Oates came out. He was a tall fella, and skinny, with a raggy grey moustache and skin that looked like candle wax. He leaned against the doorframe of his office and stared down at the Arapaho.

“What’s all this yellin’ for?”

“My daughter…she has been murdered!”

The Arapaho threw back the patchy blanket covering the body over his knees. A deep gash to the throat explained all of the bloodstains. Her unseeing eyes stared at me, her head upside down against her papa’s thigh.

“Why you tellin’ me ‘bout it? You got law up on that reservation, ain’t yer?” Sheriff Oates spread his hands wide and looked at the assembled townsfolk. They nodded and chattered amongst themselves. Reminded me of the folk in Retribution – didn’t want Natives messing up their town. Damn idiots.

“It was not a reservation killing. It was a gang from this town.”

The Arapaho glared at Sheriff Oates. Couldn’t help glaring along with him. I didn’t need to turn around to know Mahko was glaring too. He wasn’t a fan of the Arapaho but he sure as hell didn’t like reservations.

“Which gang?”

“The Stanton boys. They took my daughter while she gathered wood.”

That set the crowd murmuring again, only the excitement sounded more like worry. Sheriff Oates frowned and I guessed he was worried too. Those Stanton boys probably did that kind of thing all too often.

“Ain’t my problem, friend.”

“It is your problem, and if you will not help, then you are not my friend. These men are from your town. They must be punished.” The Arapaho punctuated every sentence with a jab of his finger.

“I’m real sorry but you won’t find any justice here.”

Sheriff Oates turned and walked back into his office. The Arapaho looked around at the crowd. He held out his hands, like he was begging them for help. I guess in a way he was.

“Won’t someone help me?”

“Go back to your rez, and leave us white folks in peace.”

I growled and the barber moved further down the veranda. Mahko climbed out of the open window and stood behind me, peering around my arm. I could feel anger coming off him like heat from a white hot coal. My own anger sent my hand to my gun. Murder is murder, no matter what colour you are.

“Won’t anyone help me? I will pay!”

That swung it. Hell, I’d have done it for free if I could, but this guy needed justice, and Mahko and me needed to eat.

“I’ll help. How many of these Stanton boys are there?” I moved right up to the rail so the townsfolk could see me, and shouted down to the Arapaho. He broke into a wide grin, relief burning in his eyes. The other folk just stared.

“Three. I cannot leave my family for long to fetch them myself,” he replied.

“You go on home and leave this with me. Hey, Oates!”

I bawled across the street. The sheriff reappeared in the doorway and I just knew the bastard had been listening.

“This ain’t your concern,” he said, his eyes flicking between Mahko and my Colt. If he guessed which of them was most deadly, I figured he’d guess wrong.

“Seeing as how you’re too scared to go get these boys, if I bring them into town, will you do what’s right?”

“I ain’t scared –”

“Will you do your job if I do mine?”

The sheriff worked his mouth open and shut like he wanted to say something, but just didn’t have the guts. Eventually he lost all his bluster and nodded. I looked down at the Arapaho and smiled.

“Looks like you got yourself a deal.”

He nodded to me, wheeled his horse around, and rode back along the main street, scattering townsfolk as he went. I turned to Mahko, and he grinned.

“Well, Mahko. Looks like we’re goin’ into the bounty huntin’ business!”

If you enjoyed that and want to read more of the adventures of Grey O’Donnell, you can grab The Guns of Retribution from Amazon. Its sequel, To Kill A Dead Man, is also available from Amazon. My three-part Old West story, Dead Man’s Hand, is 99c on Amazon or you can get it FREE by signing up to my mailing list here, and it features the first chapter of Guns as a sample.

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Short stories make excellent writing samples

I posted a few weeks ago that the newest Bloody Parchment anthology of short stories, Beachfront Starter Home, Good Bones was forthcoming. I can now announce that it’s available to buy!

You can grab it from Amazon for the Kindle, or if you have an EPUB reader then head over to Smashwords. At £2.80 for twelve stories, that works out at just 23p per story. Bargain!

My story is ‘Something Wicked This Way Slithered’, and is set in wartime Britain. It features a creepy mummy in a dank country house who is not exactly what she appears – well it is one of my short stories!

The anthology also includes stories by Liam Kruger, Michelle Barry, Chris Limb, Morgen Knight, Arno Hunter, Abigail Godsell, Matt Hayward, Doreen Perrine, Monique Snyman, Joshua de Kock and Ruth Browne.

Short stories can be a wonderful introduction

There’s something quite comforting about an anthology – I like to think of them as samplers. You get the opportunity to discover a writer you might never have found, or you can enjoy more work by a writer you already know you like. Even if you don’t like a story, there’s another one straight after it that might be more to your taste.

It was through his short stories that I discovered Neil Gaiman, and I’ve also encountered new writers by reading anthologies myself. I’ve gone on to read their novels, something I might not have done if I hadn’t read their short stories first.

So if you’re looking for a new read, and you’re willing to give up-and-coming writers a chance, then try Bloody Parchment: Beachfront Starter Home, Good Bones. If you do enjoy it, consider leaving a review – the writers will love you for it, and it’ll help other readers find it on Amazon!

Do you enjoy reading short stories? Let me know in the comments!

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What happens if you put zombies in a Western?

It sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn’t it – what do you get if you put zombies in a Western? Answer? To Kill A Dead Man!

In all seriousness, zombies in a Western aren’t such a strange proposition.  The weird Western has been around since the days of Robert E. Howard, and even films like High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider played with the idea of strange happenings in the old West. Is the Drifter the ghost of the dead marshall, or is he the personnification of the guilt of the townspeople?

Whichever it is, it’s definitely weird!

The weird Western is probably more familiar from video games like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. The Western plays very well with other genres, like comedy (Shanghai Noon), the locked room mystery (The Hateful Eight), steampunk (Wild Wild West), romance (Brokeback Mountain), science fiction (Back to the Future III, Cowboys and Aliens) and survival narratives (The Revenant). Hardly surprising that you’d be able to add horror to that list!

Heath Lowrance has explained it much better than I have, and you can read his post on the weird Western here. While you’re at it, pick up his Hawthorne: Tales of a Weirder West and check out his take on the subgenre.

But zombies in a Western?

It’s not a new idea but let’s face it, zombies are a badass foe. They’re relentless, infectious, and there’s a lot of them. There are multiple reasons behind why they’re zombies too. Is it a virus? Radiation? Voodoo? Besides, my favourite genre is horror – it was bound to bleed into Grey’s world at some point. If you want to know more about the direction of the series, check out the interview I did with David Cranmer.

So yes folks, the sequel to my 2013 novella, The Guns of Retribution, is now available, as of Monday! After the events of Retribution, which saw bounty hunter Grey O’Donnell face off against his old adversary, Sheriff Jasper Roberts, Grey is back in the saddle with his associate, Billy Cole. It’s six months later and they’re now in Colorado, on the trail of ne’er-do-well Cyrus Guthrie.  They could do with the bounty, but what should have been a routine job takes a turn for the weird when they follow the trail to an abandoned mining encampment.

Something unnatural lurks in the trees near Bentley, and when the living dead pay a visit to the town, Grey enlists the help of a Ute medicine man to fight them off. Trouble is, Bentley is also the home to Peggy Marsden, the love of Grey’s life, and when she goes missing, Grey isn’t about to lose her a second time. Will Grey defeat the walking corpses, find Peggy, and escape with his arms and limbs intact?

There’s only one way to find out! You can order the paperback direct from Amazon (it’s $7.75 in the US or £5.18 in the UK) or it’s also available for the Kindle (it’s $2.99 in the US or £2.10 in the UK).

US paperback

US Kindle

UK paperback

UK Kindle

Let me know what you think of it, and I’ll be starting work soon on book 3 in the Grey O’Donnell series – which will see Grey take even more of a detour into strange happenings and supernatural shenanigans!

Do you enjoy weird Westerns? Are they more likely to make you read a Western? Let me know in the comments!

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What’s the appeal of the Western?

The appeal of the Western lies partly in the scenery. Think of gunfights and horse chases, played out against a dramatic backdrop like Monument Valley or the plains of Kansas. Picture the railroad, curving through the landscape, while cowboys drive cattle across the wide open plains. All very epic, yeah?

By contrast, I grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne, a city that sprang from the Roman settlement of Pons Aelius, and expanded through the local industries of coal mining and ship building. It’s a city with an industrial heritage – a far cry from the clapboard towns and settlements that litter the Old West. It’s also the most northern city in England before you reach Scotland – in between the city and the borders lie rugged coastline, wide open moors, and small villages that centre around either farming or fishing.

Sandhill in Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1800s. Courtesy of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

So what on earth made me write a Western?

I did it for the sheer joy of actually writing a Western!

I grew up watching Westerns on TV. There were the movies, from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly to Shanghai Noon, and TV shows like Little House on the Prairie. My granddad used to read novels by Zane Grey. The Western always had a certain amount of popularity in the UK – and judging by the success of more recent films like 3:10 to Yuma, True Grit, and The Hateful Eight, it still does. And why wouldn’t they? You’ve got bounty hunters, cowboys, sheriffs, indigenous people – it’s hardly surprising the Western became the basis for Star Trek.

Yep, Star Trek was originally titled Wagon Train to the Stars.

I even studied the history of the American West for GCSE History, and it was utterly fascinating.  Where else would you find the westward expansion, the Mormons, the Gold Rush, cattle drives, lawless mining towns and the Pinkertons, all within the same century?

When the opportunity came up to write a Western of my own, I jumped at the chance. The result was The Guns of Retribution. Now the sequel, To Kill A Dead Man, is out, so clearly I just love writing Westerns!

But what’s the appeal of the Western?

Look at this scene! What’s not to love?! Few genres can boast real life ghost towns, but the Western can. I’d give anything to visit Bodie, in California.

The settlement of the West is so unlike anything we have in British history. Yes, we had the expansion of the British Empire, but our history stretches back for centuries before. The Romans invaded in AD 43 but we had an indigenous population before then – we’ve never had to settle here. Our civil wars took place in the 17th century, and seem so much more distant than the 19th century American Civil War.

American Civil War re-enactors

We don’t have the same variety of scenery, and the gold rushes are so much more adventurous than the Industrial Revolution that transformed Britain. We don’t have the same battle with the landscape – the rolling forests, lush hills and flat fens of “this green and pleasant land” seem quaint and genteel compared to the deserts, plains and mountains of North America. Britain has always been dominated by its class hierarchy so there’s something epic about the idea of settling a plot of land and setting up a homestead for yourself. The Old West has a mythic feel, and an inherent sense of romance.

The Western as Modern Mythology

Annie Oakley

The notorious gunslingers become the villains, and the infamous law men become the gods. There’s something timeless and totally widescreen about the Western. 1950s science fiction feels ‘twee’ and ‘dated’ by modern standards, and horror often descends into hackneyed clichés. Most fantasy feels like a Tolkien re-tread.

But the Western is populated by larger-than-life characters with as much relevance now as they had back in the day. Where else would you find figures like Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James? The noon shoot out is so much more visceral than the British flintlock duel at dawn.

Besides, the other appeal of the Western is the battle between humans and the land around them. The Western reminds us that life is tough. Accidents happen, we get sick, it can be hard to make a living, and if you’re really unlucky you might get shot in the back while playing cards. Life is fleeting but it’s also precious – and that’s what the Western reminds us.

Do you love the Western, or do you think it’s had its day? Let me know in the comments!

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Does The Revenant score points for the Western?

You’d think I’d have been over the moon to see Leonardo DiCaprio in a Western, and I had really high hopes that The Revenant would be phenomenal. The trailers certainly promised as much. But sadly…

The Revenant is BRUTAL

It’s not an enjoyable film, it’s an endurance test. I’ve seen other reviewers toss around the term ‘pain-porn’ and they’re not far off. The characters are wrung out to their absolute limits, and often beyond, just to prove that the West truly was wild. I know fans of cinematic realism will point out that life really was this brutal, nasty and totally arbitrary, but The Revenant is a film, not a documentary. When you’re a fan of horror, like I am, and you’ve seen some pretty nasty things (like Martyrs), it says a lot that The Revenant can even make you feel a bit icky.

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the same man who brought us the wandering weirdfest that was Birdman, The Revenant tells the tale of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio). He’s part of a team procuring pelts in the woods, and after being attacked by a bear, he’s left for dead by John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Fitzgerald heads off to catch up with the hunting team (and his pay cheque) while Glass embarks on the kind of quest that most survival horror films can only wish for. He’s chased by Native Americans, falls off a cliff, is swept over white water rapids, and more. The film’s trying to say “Look! Look at this man! Look at what he’s GONE through!” but it got tiresome – you don’t need an excuse to prove what a good actor DiCaprio is. Just let him get on with it.

Make no mistake, this is a miserable film

The cinematography is gorgeous, and the camerawork puts you right into the thick of the action. This is where the problem lies. Half the time the film feels like a cut scene from a particularly brutal video game, and the rest of the time it just feels indulgent. Right at the beginning, in the opening attack that makes the battle of Helm’s Deep feel like a minor disagreement over a parking space at Ikea, a horse is shot at random by a guy just strolling through the middle of the fight. Why? What purpose did that serve? Oh but it was a violent time, people say. Glass went through a lot in order to survive. True, but there comes a point where you just have to ask, “Is this necessary?”

Decide who your real antagonist is

My biggest issue with it is Alejandro’s continual insistence on what he sees as lyrical symbolism, but I saw as an opportunity to do some editing. Do we need shots of Glass’s dead Pawnee wife randomly floating above him? Probably not. We get that he misses her – he says as much. I have never seen a film which devoted so much screen time to treetops. Yes it’s very pretty but really? Not the point. Because this is where I felt the wheels came off a bit. The bad guy is set up very early on as Fitzgerald, and Tom Hardy does a very good job of playing him as a mostly incoherent, unlikeable shit.

BUT.

With one or two exceptions, Glass’s biggest problems tend to come from nature itself, be it a grizzly bear, the unrelenting cold, the river, even just his own body. The Westerns of old always had a tension between civilisation (the towns) and the untamed wilderness (the Wild West), so that’s fair enough. But in a lot of ways Glass’s biggest enemy is the environment, and the other people struggling to cope with it, not Fitzgerald. I couldn’t even root for Glass, even though DiCaprio was fantastic, because he’s just not a likeable guy. I only wanted him to succeed because it would mean the film was over.

Make no mistake, I’m thrilled to see Westerns back in the cinema, with the marvellous Slow West last year and The Hateful Eight earlier this month, and I’m super excited to see Bone Tomahawk is getting a release later this year. The Revenant does score points by engaging with the experiences of the indigenous tribes, something The Hateful Eight flat out ignores, but it’s wound so tightly all of the tension ironically falls away. No one can be on the edge of their seat for that long without their arse going to sleep.

There was a good film in here, but somehow it got squandered in favour of brutal reality and punishing the cast.

2/5 for enjoyability

4/5 for technical mastery

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