Valley of Bones (2017)

Memorable, crazy movie

A Brilliant Conflict

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Blistering performances.

Single mother, starving, paleontologist Dr. Anna Olsen (Autumn Reeser), is down on her luck. She is estranged from her son (Mason Mahay). She is offered a chance at a big find. She goes there with her son and Uncle Nate (Rhys Coiro). The issue is that junkie Wes McCoy (Steven Molony) discovered the location. He owes the cartel who want their money, or else. To be honest, I was more interested in the bones than the drama and limited action. This is a me-too film with forced excitement. It is movie you will forget once you see the next one. Guide: F-word. Stripper Nudity (Kelly Cossette).

"Valley of Bones" is a short, eye-catching title for a film that seeks to be action-adventure but goes wide and ends short of the mark. Not a bad idea for a movie, just a premise that could not be believably sustained by the author and director. Female paleontologist with a criminal past and a young son she is raising with her father gets wind of a potential dinosaur find on a remote ranch which the audience and one other character know to be a scene of drug-running violence. Apparently the drug cartel thinks it can profit from a heap of dug up fossils, too. So much is not how things are really done in the real world of pre-historic fieldwork. Fossils are not bones. Major finds are not worked by a couple of folks with shovels who can extract them over lunch. Most junkies are not good at taking down barflies. It's not the sketchy characters, it's the sketchy story and the plotholes and timing problems. BTW, Mark Margolis pays a visit from 'Better Call Saul'. Why? I'm thinking he lost a bet.

Valley of the Bones is provocative story with stand out performances. Director Dan Glaser really endows his film with great twists and surprises. Glaser's direction throughout the piece shows innovative, suspenseful moments that keep the viewer on the edge of where the story is going next.Steven Molony gives an absolutely enthralling performance as the self destructive McCoy. His scenes with Autumn Reeser resonate in a grounded, empathetic manner. Together they show the complex intertwined themes of love and loss that the film has to offer.Other cast members make their mark in this film as well. Mark Margolis is delightfully dangerous as El Papá! Also, Alexandra Blllings and Mason Mahay both give resounding, credible performances.The Cinematography is handled quite well too. There are some exceptional views of lovely landscapes and great action shots.Overall the film leaves you with a contemplative awe. The viewer will take away a long lasting impression of these motley characters, and the compelling storytelling that is forged.

When purchasing a ticket to a movie with a title like "Valley of Bones," a viewer probably has at least a fairly general idea of what he might be getting into—likely a horror picture. And in buying a ticket to this new release, he wouldn't be wrong. At least not completely.And that's part of the trouble: "Valley of Bones" changes gears, and genres, so often that it seemingly can't make up its mind precisely what it is—a crime thriller, an adventure, a soap opera, a western, a horror picture, or a domestic drama. At one alarming point, the movie seems to be on the cusp of becoming a musical—the heroine and the villain, having bonded over shared stories of their pathetically inadequate parenting skills, sing a bedtime duet from different sides of the screen, as in "West Side Story." It's a nice enough moment—it just belongs in a vastly different picture.Briefly, "Valley of Bones" concerns the efforts of a disgraced paleontologist to regain her professional honor by recovering what promises to be the largest complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton ever located. The enormous fossil was inadvertently discovered in the North Dakota badlands by a lowlife, low-level drug dealer marked for extermination by a homicidal international narcotics kingpin known as El Papa. The dealer seeks to use his share of the profits from the dig to settle his enormous debts with El Papa, and buy back his life. In the unlikely meantime, both the paleontologist and the drug dealer seek to become better parents to their alienated youngsters.By the time the picture finally sorts out its various and diverse plot elements, it's already too late. In the end, "Valley of Bones" is sort of a half-baked, stoner version of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," with the gold dust sought by the various characters in that 1948 classic replaced and substituted by either crack cocaine or dinosaur remains, depending on your perspective.Worse, the filmmakers apparently know about as much about paleontology as they do about story construction. While actual fossil recovery efforts as large as this continue for years and sometimes decades, the gigantic fossilized Tyrannosaur in this picture is unearthed and crated-up within a day or two. And although one of the beast's teeth is as long as your forearm, the entire skeleton is finally loaded onto the back of a large pickup truck. Instead of practicing actual scientific paleontology, these people behave as if they're digging up the remnants of last week's barbecue.Usually a motion picture as compelling and intelligent as "Valley of Bones" holds its gala premiere in the discount bin at Walmart. Presumably this picture made it as far as select cineplexes because the distributors noticed nothing much else going on during the first weekend of September, and decided to take a shot—a long, long shot.Judging by the same names listed over and over in the picture's credits, "Valley of Bones" was very much a family affair—writers Dan Glaser and Steven Molony are also the picture's director and co- star, respectively, and various other members of the cast and crew also pull double- and sometimes triple-duty.Your best option is much simpler—just stay home, save your money, and wait for a movie worth seeing. "Valley of Bones" is the kind of picture which sooner or later will find its way to the patented mockery of the new Netflix reboot of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."