Ravenous

Joining Cannibal! The Musical in the (admittedly) small field of historical comedies about people who eat people, Ravenous is a period piece that mixes humor and drama as it tells the tale of Capt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce), a U.S. Army officer who, after an undistinguished stint in the Mexican-American War, is sent to a remote outpost in the Sierra Nevada. One day Boyd encounters Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle), a Scottsman who tells a horrible tale of being stranded with his fellow travelers in a cave after being deserted by their guide, and how they were forced by one Col. Ives to eat human flesh to survive. However, after a search party is organized, Boyd realizes Colqhoun and Ives are actually the same person, and the cheerful cannibal tries to convince Boyd to join him in his life of culinary crime as the ongoing Western migration rings the dinner bell for his favorite entre. While director Antonia Bird and screenwriter Ted Griffin play this story for laughs, they don't shrink from the more grim aspects of the story, and the Czech and Slovakain locations give the film a rugged and realistic look.