Butcher’s Crossing (2022)

Director: Gabe Polsky

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Fred Hechinger, Jeremy Bobb

An Ivy League drop-out travels to the Colorado wilderness, where he joins a team of buffalo hunters on a journey that puts his life and sanity at risk. Based on the highly acclaimed novel by John Williams.

Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) left Harvard to explore the world. He travels to the small town of Butcher’s Crossing in Kansas, where he goes to see an old acquaintance of his Dad, McDonald (Paul Raci). McDonald deals in buffalo skin and when Will asks to go on one of the hunts, McDonald refuses.

Will then teams up with Miller (Nicolas Cage), who claims to know the secret location of thousands of buffalo. They are joined by Hoge, the wagon driver, and Schneider, who knows how to skin buffalo, and will also cook for them.

And so the four men embark on a journey to the location of the buffalo. The journey takes them across Indian land and I anticipated them being pursued by Indians, but alas that was not to happen. Instead, the film resorted to the hunting and killing of buffaloes – in all the gory detail. This film did not spare the viewer the unpleasantness of having to watch buffaloes being skinned and cut into pieces! It became unbearable to watch and I reached for my remote to forward these scenes. But the film continued with hunting and skinning scene upon hunting and butchering scene in the most vile and disgusting manner.

If you’re an animal lover like myself, its best to avoid this movie at all cost. In fact, it might even upset seasoned game hunters. I can’t recommend this movie at all. Ugh, disgusting!!!

Would I watch it again? This is one of the few movies I wish I’d not seen, so it’s a definite NO!