The Missouri Breaks (1976)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Best movie of this year hands down!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This was a great film for Kathleen Lloyd, who brought a spunky kind of freshness. I don't think Susan Sarandon would have done as well. Jack Nicholson could have carried this film without Brando. What Brandon brought was a touch of excentrisity that only he could do. I really like this film. The twists that Marlon Brando brings are very entertaining. The throwing weapon that he used, helping Randy Quaid swim, and his dressing up as a woman was entertaining. It's not the best western out there, but it is very entertaining.

Mr. Arthur Penn has directed some of the best films ever made - his instinct of a great story is unmistaken. His love for the best literature is again proved here. Thomas McGuane wrote a wild west Hamlet version that maintains the original theme plus lots of humor. But the original story is cruel and so this post 60s western should be eventually.

Rancher David Braxton has a horse rustling problem and he deals with it ruthlessly. His daughter Jane (Kathleen Lloyd) struggles with his father's cruelty. Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson) leads a band of horse thieves and one of his men just got hung by Braxton. The gang decides to rob a train since they're getting hung anyways but it's a comedic adventure when Logan almost falls off a bridge. Logan decides to take revenge on Braxton by flirting with his innocent daughter Jane, buying a small neighboring property, and stealing his stock. Logan's men kill the Braxton foreman and Braxton hires regulator Lee Clayton (Marlon Brando) to hunt down the thieves. Clayton is an odd man who quickly zeroes in on Logan. Meanwhile Logan's men goes to Canada to steal horses from the RCMP.It's a comedic revisionist western taking apart some of the iconic western characters. The comedic part is light and unfunny. This is a worthwhile watch simply for Marlon Brando's crazy performance. It is much derided at the time and I can see why. His problematic actor style is legendary now. His wildly unique character overshadows everyone else including a popular Jack Nicholson right after 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. This movie must have built up unbearable hype and the disappointment is easy to imagine. The movie doesn't really hold together as a whole. The jokes aren't funny. Brando is all by himself. Nicholson tries his best but nobody can be expected to pull this off. At least he and Kathleen Lloyd have some fun flirty scenes together.

The 1970s saw the release of a number of idiosyncratic or revisionist Westerns (Altman's "Buffalo Bill", "Soldier Blue", "Two Mules For Sister Sarah", "The Life And Times of Judge Roy Bean", "El Topo", "Little Big Man" etc etc). Arthur Penn's "The Missouri Breaks" isn't as outlandish as some of these films, yet still manages to seem wholly strange. Through long, glacial and grand, Penn's film seems preoccupied with small moments and gestures. It's a tiny tale directed with an odd self-importance.The plot? Jack Nicholson plays a minor criminal who eventually decides to settle down on a small farm. The problem? A bounty hunter, played by Marlon Brando, begins to delve into Nicholson's past. One by one Brando kills Nicholson's buddies, until the duo meet for a final showdown. Sounds generic? The film approaches all its clichés from odd angles, subverts all expectations, and stretches and elongates sequences which would otherwise be brushed past.More interesting is Marlon Brando's character, Robert E. Lee Clayton. During this period Brando was creating a number of absolutely ridiculous but downright entertaining characters ("The Godfather", "Burn!", "Mutiny on the Bounty" etc), and his Lee Clayton is no different. Part madman, part genius, flamboyant, incomprehensible, cruel, wild, professional, whimsical, effete, sadistic, strange and deliberately at odds with the naturalism of the rest of the cast, Brando's Clayton steals every scene he's in. He toys with his cast like a cat toys with a ball of yarn.What's interesting is that Brando completely contradicts the intentions of screenwriter Thomas McGuane. McGuande wanted a film about "people and not canvases". He wanted something low-key, slow and human; to capture the tempo and tone of the "real" West. Brando, however, then came in and completely re-wrote his character, demanded huge changes, invented his own weapons and improvised and rewrote much of his (hilarious) dialogue. The result is a film which seems to be pulling in two completely contradictory directions.It's hard to know what else "The Missouri Breaks" is about. Maybe it's about things breaking up and breaking apart. Everyone in the film is torn apart, loses something, and traditional western archetypes seem to be set up only to eventually be confused, made impotent or disposable. Lee Clayton himself seems to be portrayed as a watcher, a man always using binoculars and telescopes and who eventually intrudes upon the film from "outside", tearing things up as he does so. He overwhelms everything, and seems recognised as a threat only by Nicholson, who tries his mightiest to get rid of this weird little man who disobeys all rules.On the negative side, the film is "revisionist" and "subversive" in only the most trite and banal ways, Nicholson never convinces as a man of the period and the film is far too long for such thin material, even if its length does lend a strong, portentous weight to its climax. The film contains a number of great sequences, perhaps the best of which sees Brando donning an old woman's bonnet and dress, delivering odd dialogue whilst a burning log cabin lights up the night sky. Other odd moments include Brando kissing a horse and even singing it love songs. He truly was bizarre.7.9/10 – See "The Long Riders", "Terror in a Texas Town", "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid", "Lonely are the Brave" and "Broken Lance". Worth one viewing.