satdoc Brando and Nicholson? Must be a great film. Guess again. Here is a western where Brando wears weird costumes (including old lady drag), and treats us to inane dialog and even a fart. Well he's Brando and can bore and insult us without consequences. Nicholson does an ordinary job with an unremarkable character. They should take lessons from Randy Quaid, who did the best acting.

Hitchcoc I know that the television commercials were the prime reason I went to this movie. In the 1970's I had a job in a shopping mall which bordered a cineplex. So I went to all kinds of movies because I had time to kill before going to work in the late afternoon. I went to see films I'd never go to today. This is one that would be so out of character for me. I only remember that it is about as harsh as any film I've ever seen. It's about action and revenge and reaction and revenge. Brando is the baddest badass of all badasses. His employer is one of those subdued psychotics. The main character is played by Jack Nicholson who watches as his friends and associates are murdered one by one. Also, when he hooks up with a young woman (who is the daughter of the man who set all this killing in motion) and brings on the wrath of the psycho. It has such a violent conclusion. You like revenge flicks, this is your baby.

zardoz-13 "Bonnie & Clyde" director Arthur Penn helmed some classic movies, and he directed two movies with Marlon Brando. The first movie they made together "The Chase" was a long-winded murderous tale with Brando as a sheriff after a fugitive. "The Chase" was coherent, but their second collaboration—which is less of collaboration—"The Missouri Breaks" is a complete mess done on a big budget. The saga about horse rustlers wears out its welcome and what might have been a grand western is reduced to mediocrity by an eccentric performance by Marlon Brando that goes haywire. He dresses in a variety of wardrobe as Lee Clayton, a 'regulator' who is hunting down Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson) and his gang of horse rustlers. The only thing interesting about this mishmash is the idea that the outlaws win. Thomas McGuane's screenplay is like rustled horses stampeding all over the place with Brando improvising his scenes and dialogue. The supporting cast with Randy Quaid, Frederic Forrest, Harry Dean Stanton, and John Ryan is sturdy enough, and the scenery is rugged and thorny. Brando's regulator wields revolvers, rifles, and an object that looks like the plus sign in an arithmetic equation to kill both animals and men. John Williams of "Star Wars" fame wrote the orchestral score before he scored "Star Wars" and it is low-key. "The Missouri Breaks" is an odd, mean-spirited, shoot'em up with little to recommend it aside it being a western for western completists to say that they have watched. The drama is mitigated by the screenplay's incoherence. Jack Nicholson gives a good performance. As for Brando, he doesn't steal the show so much as sabotage it.

tieman64 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.