Review of The Missouri Breaks (1976) by Vincent G — 03 Aug 2014

An infamous mess of a film that now has it's defenders, but I'm siding with the critics of the time and view this film as an indulgent mess mess. You have a brilliant director, Arthur Penn, and an amazing cast, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Forrest and John P.

Ryan, who are all squandered on what should have been a very cool revisionist western. The story is quite serviceable, about reformed horse thief Nicholson trying to make it as a farmer, but the rich ranger father of the woman he's with hires Brando to kill him and his fellow rustlers.

I'm fine with offbeat pacing and quirky westerns, like the Monte Hellman ones with Nicholson, but this film seemed like a collection of scenes barely strung together. There was reportedly a lot of improvisation on set and Penn reportedly gave up on giving Brando any sort of direction when it became clear he was going to do what he wanted regardless.

Robert Towne was also reportedly brought in to rewrite the ending of the film so that all of Brando's improvisations would come together and make some sort of sense to where the film was leading. A fine score by John Williams is also wasted.

If the fault lies somewhere, I would lay it in an over indulgent Brando performance that seemed to drag down the rest of the film.