Main Cast: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Lloyd, Randy Quaid, Frederic Forrest
Release Year: 1976
Country: US
Run Time: 126 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
A rancher, a rustler, and a regulator face off in Arthur Penn's eccentric western. As a cover for their horse thievery, a gang of Montana rustlers, led by the laid-back Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson), buys a small farm adjacent to the ranch of their latest target/nemesis, Braxton (John McLiam). When the gang leaves Tom on the farm and heads to Canada for another score, Tom takes a shine both to farming and Braxton's rebellious, strong-willed daughter, Jane (Kathleen Lloyd). The slightly loco Braxton, however, hires the psychopathic regulator Lee Clayton (Marlon Brando) to root out the rustlers. With a series of unorthodox methods (and costumes), Clayton hunts down Logan and his gang one by one, even after Braxton fires him, but Logan isn't about to let Clayton (or Braxton) make him obsolete. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Review
With a script by Thomas McGuane, the volatile presence of both Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, and director Arthur Penn's penchant for breaking genre conventions and mixing moods, The Missouri Breaks veers from quiet poignancy to broad comedy to frontier action, and finally to abruptly shocking violence, in a story that poses the outlaw as the only viable hero. Even the outlaw cannot keep living as an outlaw, however; with its sense of an ending era and the need to move on, The Missouri Breaks matched the sentiment of a cluster of 1976 Westerns, including The Shootist and The Outlaw Josey Wales. Shot on location in Montana, The Missouri Breaks was meant to be a major prestige production with the trio of Brando, Nicholson, and Penn, but the public and critics did not care for Penn's last revision of the Western. Despite the charismatic star match-up, it bombed, and Penn did not make another film for five years. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Pat Norris - Costume Designer, Malcolm Harding - First Assistant Director, Arthur Penn - Director, Michael Moore - Second Unit Director, Dede Allen - Editor, Jerry Greenberg - Editor, John Williams - Composer (Music Score), Stephen Myles Berger - Production Designer, Albert Brenner - Production Designer, Michael C. Butler - Cinematographer, Elliott Kastner - Producer, Robert M. Sherman - Producer, Marvin March - Set Designer, Jack Solomon - Sound/Sound Designer, Dennis L. Maitland - Sound/Sound Designer, Richard Vorisek - Sound/Sound Designer, Thomas McGuane - Screenwriter
The title of the movie refers to a forlorn and very rugged area in north central Montana, where over eons the Missouri River has made countless deep cuts or "breaks" in the land. The movie chronicles a gang of horse thieves that set their sights on a Montana ranch, with Nicholson posing as a farmer who soon comes under the suspicion of Brando, an eccentric bounty hunter hired by the ranch's ruthless owner.
In a May 24, 1976Time magazine interview it was revealed that Brando "changed the entire flavor of his character—a bounty hunter called Robert E. Lee Clayton—inventing a deadly hand weapon resembling both a harpoon and a mace that he uses to kill. 'I always wondered why in the history of lethal weapons no one invented that particular one. It appealed to me because I used to be very expert at knife throwing.'"[1]
The filming of the film was marked by Brando's eccentric behavior, which included catching grasshoppers after the day's shooting and taking a bite out of a live frog.[2]
Because of several instances of animal cruelty inflicted during the filming of several scenes—which resulted in the death of one horse and the wounding of several others—this film appears on the American Humane Association's "unacceptable" list.[3]
Cast
Marlon Brando ... Robert E. Lee Clayton Jack Nicholson ... Tom Logan Randy Quaid ... Little Tod Kathleen Lloyd ... Jane Braxton Frederic Forrest ... Cary Harry Dean Stanton ... Calvin
John McLiam ... David Braxton
John P. Ryan ... Si (as John Ryan)
Sam Gilman ... Hank Rate Steve Franken ... Lonesome Kid
Richard Bradford ... Pete Marker
James Greene ... Hellsgate rancher
Luana Anders ... Rancher's wife
Danny Goldman ... Baggage clerk
Hunter von Leer ... Sandy
