Missouri Breaks

starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, Directed by Arthur Penn.

Remember when two leading actors' names bannered across a movie marquee over the title? Folks couldn't resist seeing 3 combination like Cagney/Bogart or Tracy/Hepburn starring at the local theatre. When these same films are shown on TV today they continue to generate waves of nostalgia and draw large, more artistically inclined, audiences away from the regular programs.

Well, the days of the double superstar movie are back, with the latest big team-up being Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson in Missouri Breaks, a western-which is a form many people were beginning to think was obsolete, except as a parody (ala Blazing Saddles). This one should do pretty well, of course.

Written by Torn McGuane, Missouri Breaks has a simple, rather straightforward plot that basically relies on the talent of the two leading actors to keep it interesting. Brando is Lee Clayton, the regulator or assassin, who is hired to stop Tom Logan from rustling horses. The meat of the movie involves the psychological down between the two characters: Brando the pursuer vs. Nicholson, the floating survivor.

Brando's Clayton is a complex monstrosity, a man who is allowed to roam the countryside at will, an executioner for the wealthy ranch owners of the west. All too often he appoints himself judge and jury of a man's fate.

When this happens Director Arthur Penn gets to do his blood-and-guts trip, which he got to explore earlier in both his Bonnie and Clyde and Little Big Man movies. This one has a rather large catalogue of gore, including two hangings, a drowning, a burning, a spearing, and one slashed throat. Together Penn and Brando create one of the cruelest, most chilling portrayals of sadism in movie history.

Nicholson, on the other hand, is dealt with sympathetically by Penn. Nicholson's Tom Logan is the underdog, outlaw hero of Breaks-a poor, small-time thief with an ingratiating personality.

Certainly not an epic, Missouri Breaks nonetheless succeeds in being an absorbing, entertaining flick. It would be a scandal if it wasn't.

- Sally Wright