By Ben Pearson/March 15, 2019 3:14 pm EST
Zahler’s most recent movies, Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete, have a real nasty streak running through them. Bone Tomahawk has one of the goriest moments I’ve seen in a movie theater this decade, but it’s also a tightly-plotted drama with terrific dialogue and a heavy focus on character. I read the script for The Brigands of Rattleborge (again, it’s now been changed to Rattlecreek) a few years ago, and it is indeed uber-violent. There are images from that script that are seared into my mind, and it pulls no punches when it comes to its deaths (of which there are many). It’s a story about the cycles of violence, and if you’ve read the script (it’s been floating around online over the past few years), it’s easy to see why it’s taken so long to get made.
But Park Chan-wook is a guy who swings for the fences when it comes to cinematic violence, and since he was interested several years ago and is still on board, this is clearly a project that’s stuck with him. Producer Bradley Fischer is looking for another A-list actor to play the sheriff opposite McConaughey’s doctor (assuming they can get that deal squared away), and I’m very curious to see if this film will make it to screens with that graphic violence in tact or if it some of the more gruesome elements (rape, torture, etc.) will be reined in a bit.
