The Missouri Breaks
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Movie Reviews of The Missouri Breaks
Movie Review: Brando, Nicholson and Penn deliver a knockout
Summary: 4 Stars
The Missouri Breaks - A western unlike any you have ever seen!!
Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson team up and deliver one helluva of a film. The Missouri Breaks is an intelligent, eccentric western where Arthur Penn calls the shots and has the good sense to let the 2 main leads do what they want and basically give the viewer a ride they will never forget.
Brando's first movie after the double impact of Godfather and Tango and Nicholson fresh from his triumph in Cuckoos Nest. Breaks bombed at the box office, coz it is not like any Western ever made. There are no redeemable characters in this movie, everyone of the main characters is bad / strange and eccentric.
Nicholson plays a rustler, who robs ranch owners of their horses. One of the big ranchers hires a Regulator to kill the ranchers - Regulator Brando (Lee Clayton), the most eccentric person to walk the wild west. Brando's character is as sadistic as they come. A man who kills for pleasure and has the most strange habits, bird watching, hunting rabbits with strange weapons, singing songs on his lil guitar in the wilderness, having lilac foam baths...
Some critics lambasted Brando's performance as his accent keeps changing, there were also some critics who thought Brando was Brilliant!!! Marlon Brando just eats up the scenery and is so amazing, that one cannot look at anything when he is on screen, yes even Nicholson, cant grab your attention.
The scenes featuring the 2 leads are worth the price of a ticket. Both the lead actors are taunting each other and it is amazing to watch them improvise...It is a beautiful movie to watch as the picturesque Montana looks really inviting.
A cracker of a movie, not your usual shoot em up westerns, but a movie where characters do a lot more talking and a lot less shooting. Witty dialogue throughout make it a great treat...
Nicholson says of the movie - that he was terrified of working with Brando as he knew that Brando was in a different league altogether...Brando does steal the movie, but Nicholson has his moments...the best scene according to me is the one where Brando and Nicholson meet up, and Brando shoots cabbages - Brilliant!!
The Missouri Breaks is a must watch and it just keeps getting better with every viewing...cant imagine why it dint do well...
Movie Review: Arthur Penn, Brando, Nicholsen, Harry Dean....what more do you want??
Summary: 4 Stars
This is one of the near-great post modern Westerns IMO. (The 2 Great ones being The Wild Bunch--altho is that really post modern?--or the ultimate "classic western"?--& Once Upon a Time in the West.) And we could add "the Last Picture show" to the mix.....but is that really a "western" (it takes place in the 1950's)?
It's got Arthur Penn as director, Brando, Nicholsen, Harry Dean, et al. And the sexy brunette Kathleen Lloyd who blatently & with direct language seduces Nicholsen.
It imposes a "70's" sensibility on the American Western. And some people may not like that. I think--the best film to compare it to is Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller".
I dig it....any fan of quirky, offbeat films should see it.
Update: Jan. 2008: I saw this movie again last night, right after watching "Annie Hall" for the upmteenth time. Both are great, great '70's American films. The only thing I can add to my earlier comments about The Missouri Breaks is that, if anything, I understated how wonderful this movie is. Brando's performance, Nicholsen's performance, & the whole cast of excellent 70's film actors, are amongst their best work.
Most of all, it's extremely touching. Right from the beginning, we care about Nicholsen's gang of outlaws; Randy Quaid, Harry Dean, et al. And to see the violence & brutality they endure--for my money, it's even more emotional than Penn's "Bonnie & Clyde". The love story between Kathleen Lloyd & Nicholsen: I'm hard pressed to find a greater, or more honest, love/lust story in film between a man & a woman......
Movie Review: a great western---forgotten
Summary: 4 Stars
I first saw The Missouri Breaks soon after its release in 1976.I liked the movie so much,I went back and watched it again.Penn assembleed one of the best Western casts everThe stars,the not-so stars,the bad guys and good guys and the girl filled the screen with a natural fit that only great character actors can do.The rustlers handled guns casually and realistically.The towns looked Shane'ish(stark--dirty--real)--Penn's Montana is prairie,isolated,lawless,covered to the horizon with tall grasses and windswept flowers,almost colorless ,washed out,without fragrence,more unrelenting than beautiful.Forget postcard vistas of mountains with snowcaps,this was the Montana that settlers found and came to hate then love.
Jack N. is very good,calm,businesslike,playing a regular role,that paid big bucks.K. Lloyd,the girl,isgood and very forgetful.Quaid,Stanton and the rest are great as the gang.The story itself has been told and filmed many times,and,there is Brando,who steals the movie with a strange brilliant performance as a cold blooded assassin.In fact,Brando's scenes dominate the film and preverts the plot as we see regular good-bad guys being stalked by a bad-bad guy,strangely polite,even polished,and yet as he rides off at the end of the film we know behind the good manners and eloquent mannerisms lies the beast.Marlon B. was the greatest actor ever,I know so because he takes an implausible character and makes a little western into a real western classic.
Movie Review: WEIRD, QUIRKY AND FUNNY -- GREAT DIALOGUE
Summary: 4 Stars
Arthur Penn's laconic, self-parodying, quirky western MISSOURI BREAKS (MGM) was widely dismissed as a bomb when it was released theatrically (1976). But something happened as it aged and reappeared on DVD 30 years later: The metaphors became clear and the story relevant.
The late Marlon Brando is an Irish-accented, many-costumed ruthless "regulator," a fearsome hired killer who can't be fired and Jack Nicholson is an unstable rustler who takes a shine to farming and the neighbor rancher's daughter while his gang -- the target of the rancher's hired killer - is away on a job.
There's much more to the complex plot, but the heart of this violent, darkly funny, anachronistic film of shifting loyalties is great dialogue: "Well if you're gonna start that, I'm just gonna go home and shovel steer manure on the pansies." Sharply photographed, the gritty and authentic locations are a big plus.
Something about "Missouri Breaks" resonates in our real world of shifting political rationales for sanctioned killing. This marvelous film is way ahead of its time and Brando is unforgettable as an amoral gun for hire who especially loves his job when he's cross-dressing.
Rated: PG. Genre: Western. 2 hours, 6 minutes. Starring: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Lloyd, Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton.
Movie Review: It has Nicholson and Brando together! Need I say more ?
Summary: 4 Stars
The poster makes Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando look like partners or friends in this western, but no they are bitter enemies. Brando stars as Lee Clayton, a creepy and strange gunfighter who's hired to kill Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson) and his gang. Tom just wants to settle down with his gang and start a farm after they robbed a train. He even has eyes for the pretty Jane Braxton (Kathleen Lloyd), but their relationship is put the test, since her father (John McLiam) is the one that hired Lee Clayton.
Nicholson makes as good of an anti-hero as he did in Goin South which of course came out two years after the Missouri Breaks. He was a bit more clumsy and even a little sleazy in that though. He plays it more straight here and it's Brando who's the one that has a good time hamming it up as the nutty Irish cross dressing gunfighter. I never thought anyone could steal the show from Jack until I saw Brando in this movie. I'm not sure if Brando was nominated but he should have been.