Will Andrews is a Harvard dropout haunted by ideals and philosophy, eager to exchange his privileged life for a raw, self‑defining adventure. He arrives in the frontier outpost of Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas, telling locals he seeks something beyond the bookish world he’s known—but he’s warned by McDonald, a seasoned hide trader, that the real West can be soul‑crushing.
Undeterred, Will meets Miller, a hardened buffalo hunter with a mythic air. Miller claims to know a remote Colorado valley bursting with untouched buffalo herds. Intrigued, Will finances the expedition and joins Miller, along with a wary skinner, Fred Schneider, and a one‑armed, superstitious cook named Charley Hoge.
Their trek proves punishing, through desolate terrain and dwindling supplies. Yet, upon reaching the hidden valley, the sight of thousands of buffalo awes them. Miller begins a systematic, almost ritualistic massacre—slaughtering hundreds daily while Will is caught between thrill and revulsion. Schneider and Hoge grow uneasy as the carnage intensifies.
Miller’s obsession deepens: he refuses to leave despite being overloaded with hides. A brutal winter storm traps the men in the valley for months. Strained sanity frays: Schneider confronts Hoge, burning his Bible in anger; Hoge retaliates by poisoning Schneider. Will’s mental state crumbles as isolation and guilt compound.
Come spring, conflict turns lethal—Hoge is killed by a poisoned Schneider, and tragedy strikes again when a wagon carrying most of their hides and Schneider plunges off a cliff into a raging river. The survivors return to Butcher’s Crossing, only to find the town lifeless and the hide market collapsed. Their efforts are rendered meaningless.
In a final act of despair, Miller burns the hide warehouse and rides off into the night. Will, disillusioned but changed, declines McDonald’s offer to return to academia. Instead, he rides into the wilderness, saying he has “seen what [he] needed to see”.
The film is a stark meditation on obsession, greed, and humanity’s destructive relationship with nature. Backdropped by haunting visuals and potent performances—especially by Nicolas Cage as Miller—it critiques manifest destiny and the intoxicating descent into madness when ambition overshadows morality
