* * * * (out of 5)
Acclaimed director Arthur Penn (The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde) got some fine actors together and made a slightly different, but fun western in 1976 called The Missouri Breaks. Jack Nicholson stars as the head of an off-kilter horse-rustling gang. His tormentor is hired gun extraordinaire, Marlon Brando.
In the last 30 years of his life, Brando (who died in 2004) played only a few roles, but mostly mailed in his performances. I liked him in The Score and Apocalypse Now, but his greatest work in that time had to be the mafia don in The Freshman. In this movie, as Robert E. Lee Clayton, he does his second best work in that period. While Nicholson is the star, Brando steals the movie with his odd, but sincere performance.
Nicholson's sidekicks are the always great character actors Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Forrest and Randy Quaid. After pulling off a semi-successful train robbery, Jack convinces the locals that he's a respectable business man looking to buy a ranch. The ranch is merely a front for their horse stealing and since they are in Montana, their next big step is to steal Canadian horses. Horse stealing is a hanging offense at this time and without any formal law in the area, hangings without a trial are common.
(According to WikiPedia) The Missouri Breaks are actually called the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument: a series of badland areas characterized by rock outcroppings, steep bluffs and grassy plains. While the sidekicks head up to Canada to steal the vaunted Mounties' horses, Nicholson's neighbor, the biggest rancher in the area hires Brando to track and kill the varmints.
Brando comes in with a flourish and never lets up. Wearing a white fringe jacket, he puts on a great Irish brogue and seems very fancy for a "regulator." Before the movie is over he will change his accent three times, play love songs to his horse, take bubble baths and kill someone dressed as a granny for no other obvious reason than to satisfy his own bi-polar disorders.
Jack is toned down here, but in control as a bandit who seems to want to go straight. He doesn't even come close to matching Brando on the Crazy Train, but has his own quirks, like wearing a funny kerchief while tending his cabbage garden and offering his lady friend Chinese tea.
Not a dull moment.
The Freditor
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