The Worst Film Ever

hyped garbage

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

disgusting, overrated, pointless

Despite what a lot of reviewers on IMDb say, I think the critics who slammed THE MISSOURI BREAKS when it came out got it right the first time: this movie is a mess, and considering the incredible talent both on screen and behind the camera, a colossal disappointment. It's meandering and indulgent, a representative of some of the worst of 1970's film making.I am a big fan of both Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson and remember the anticipation when this movie came out back in the spring of 1976 only months after Nicholson won the Best Actor Oscar for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST; Brando was still riding high on the strength of his comeback in THE GODFATHER. It was also directed by Arthur Penn, the man who made BONNIE AND CLYDE; what could go wrong?Well, just about everything starting with the script by Thomas McGuane, which was evidently thrown away before production even started. What we get is an ambling story about some horse thieves in Montana being hunted down by a Regulator hired by a spiteful rancher. That's a good story for a ninety minute Randolph Scott/Budd Botticher horse opera in the 1950's, but not enough to fill more than two hours two decades later; we get scenes full of rambling dialog by actors trying to sound "authentic" as they wander through miles of beautiful Montana countryside. Great effort is made to effect a grimy and dingy look as characters trudge through muddy streets to get to an outhouse. Then there is Brando's wildly out there performance as Robert E. Lee Clayton, the Regulator hired to hunt down Nicholson and his gang of horse thieves by rancher John McLiam. Reportedly Penn could not get Brando to follow his direction and just gave up, letting the big star improvise his lines ("Granny's getting' tired.") in an erratic Irish brogue, even playing some scenes in a Mother Hubbard dress. What we get is a performance from Brando that seems to be in a movie all it's own, with little relationship to the rest of the actors around him. It is clearly apparent that the Emperor has no clothes, and that the greatest and most dynamic actor of his, or any, generation doesn't know what the hell he's doing and does not care. It's a shame, because when he did give a damn, and had a strong director (Elia Kazan, Francis Ford Coppola) to work with, Brando did legendary work. Given that it is a western and the tone of the screenplay, I really wonder what Sam Peckinpah would have done with it; he worked on ONE EYED JACKS and reportedly got along well with Brando.Nicholson on the other hand, does not shame himself here, but his Tom Logan is really not one of his "Jack" performances, still nobody could shout a line like him. He would revisit the genre with better results a few years later in Going SOUTH. I fully understand why THE MISSOURI BREAKS has its fans, there is much about it that is striking and unique, especially the violent death scenes when Clayton takes out members of Nicholson's gang: the drowning of Randy Quaid; Frederic Forrest getting blown away by a Creedmore rifle while taking a dump in the before mentioned privy; Harry Dean Stanton getting that nasty looking harpoon/shiv in the eye. And any movie with the great Harry Dean in it is worth at least a look; Kathleen Lloyd makes for a lovely leading lady opposite Nicholson as the villain's daughter. Shame she didn't get better roles in better movies. I guess what I really hold against THE MISSOURI BREAKS is that it helped kill off the western in the 1970's despite the success that same year (1976) of John Wayne's THE SHOOTIST and Clint Eastwood's THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES. Both Brando and Nicholson were paid over a million dollars each for their work here and the movies's failure made producers skittish about taking such risks again. They don't make movies like THE MISSOURI BREAKS anymore, and that's just as well.

What was this about? I'll re-phrase that: what in tarnation was that all about? This was the on-screen reaction by the cow-pokes, ranchers, whatever, at the hanged man's funeral when Brando made his entry. Was he doused in a perfume of some sort? Or just flatulent? "Hanged", by the way, not "hung". Pictures are hung, men are hanged. Ask Braxton: he reads a lot. The accurate synopsis tells me that Braxton was homosexual, which was not something I'd really twigged; although I did suspect Brando, who was bizarre enough to be anything. Braxton was quite mad, anyway, so his wife had more than one reason for leaving him. Why did his daughter stay? Could the plot be described as off-kilter? Perhaps quirky would be another suitable epithet. The title was a puzzle from the start. Missouri is a river, right? How does it "break"? Or did I read that wrong? In any case, the title sheds no light on the story --- if there was one. OK, so the title of the movie refers to a forlorn and very rugged area of north central Montana, where over eons the Missouri River has made countless deep cuts or "breaks" in the land. Thank you, Wikipedia; but it's no help.Everything was distinctly odd, including the dialogue which managed to be simultaneously earthy and weird. Did girls proposition men in those words and that manner in the 1880s? This was the 1880s, wasn't it?Also, I thought it was normally the Malay States where they wear hats like plates. The hat didn't go well with the Shane-type jacket; and why was it changed for a granny bonnet, and where did the word "regulator" come from? Was this an improvement on "terminator"? "Operator" or "janitor"? Wasn't Billy the Kid a regulator?Nice pictures of horses running around the scenery. Was this movie alluding to "Cat Ballou"? If a gang can't move up to train-robbing from ordinary horse- or cattle-rustling there'd be no progress at all in the world. They would have to move down to Hole-in-the-Wall. You're not Jesse James. Not if you throw your bag of banknotes around like confetti. Was this a comedy without Hope? Lonesome Kid? Huh ? Parole after two weeks? Don't shoot a naked man in a bathtub, when you can cut his throat as he sleeps. Only Eli Wallach takes his gun into his bath with him. Did Brando harbour unnatural feelings for his horse? He drifted in from another flick about cuckoos. Jack was up-staged.I give up. One of the oddest if not the silliest movies I've ever seen. I did read that both star actors were astonishingly well paid for their appearances. I liked the girl. But I'm baffled.

Starring two titans of cinema in Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, The Missouri Breaks sees Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde) direct, the screenplay provided by Thomas McGuane (Tom Horn) and John Williams composes the score. In the supporting cast are Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid, Kathleen Lloyd, Frederic Forrest and John McLiam. With all these people in place the film was one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Anticipation that was not met at the time as the film became a critical and commercial failure. However, time has been kind to the piece and now it shows itself to be far better than the iffy reputation that's afforded it.The story is a sort of working of the Johnson County War that surfaced in the early 1890s in Wyoming, where newer ranchers tried to settle but were set upon by the more established cattle barons of the land. One of the tactics by the wealthier ranch owners was to hire gunmen to terrorise anyone they saw as a threat. Here in Penn's movie we see David Braxton (McLiam) ruthlessly deal with anyone who he sees as a threat to his property. However, when someone enacts revenge on him by hanging his foreman, Braxton hires himself a "Regulator" named Robert E. Lee Clayton (Brando) to seek and destroy as it were. This spells bad news for the rustling gang led by Tom Logan (Nicholson), especially since Logan has started to form a relationship with Braxton's daughter, Jane (Lloyd). Somethings gotta give and blood is sure to be spilt.The most popular word used in reviews for the film is eccentric, mostly in reference to Brando's performance. The big man was growing ever more erratic off the screen and sure enough he changed the make up of his character and improvised at his leisure. Yet it does work in the context of the movie. With his dandy nastiness playing off of an excellent Nicholson turn, McGuane's richly detailed screenplay gets added bite, particularly during the more solemn parts of the story; where patience would be tried were it not for the brogue Irish Clayton. With Penn at the helm it's no surprise to find the piece is an amalgamation of moods. Poignancy hangs heavy for the most part as we deal in the ending of an era and the need to move on. But Penn also delivers much frontier action and snatches of cheery comedy. Then there is the violence, which doubles in shock value on account of the leisurely pace that Penn has favoured. It's sad to think that one of the best splicers of moods was so upset at the reaction to his film he quit cinema for the next five years.The film, well more realistically the reaction to it, possibly sounded the death knell for the Western genre until Eastwood & Costner refused to let it die. The 70s was an intriguing decade for the Oater, with many of them veering between traditional and revisionist. But of the many that were produced, the ones that dealt with the passing of the era, where the protagonists are soon to be relics of a tamed wilderness, have an elegiac quality about them. Penn's movie is fit to sit alongside the likes of Monte Walsh, The Shootist and The Outlaw Josey Wales. Yes it's quirky and is slowly driven forward, but it has many qualities for the genre fan to gorge on. 7.5/10

Fun-loving criminal Jack Nicholson attempts to keep a low-profile by buying a ranch in order to launder stolen livestock. However, he begins to reconsider his thieving ways when he begins to romance the daughter of a local rancher. Soon he finds himself and his gang targeted by Marlon Brando, a very eccentric and very lethal hired gun.Though not as bad as some prominent critics would have you believe, nor as brilliant as others insist, this once in a lifetime pairing of Nicholson and Brando is a little bit disappointing.They're both pretty amusing (especially Brando), but don't really have much to do, at least until the final fifty-minutes or so when Brando gets busy. These two simply should have thrown off more sparks than they did!Still, this tongue-in-cheek, offbeat western has it's moments, just not as many as director Arthur Penn's Little Big Man.There's some good support from Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, Frederick Forrest, and John P. Ryan, as Nicholson's gang.