Product Details

• Actors: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Kathleen Lloyd, Frederic Forrest
• Directors: Arthur Penn
• Writers: Robert Towne, Thomas McGuane
• Producers: Elliott Kastner, Marion Rosenberg, Robert M. Sherman
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: December 9, 1997
• Run Time: 126 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792837347
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,859 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unjustly overlooked Western, November 4, 2002

By 

LGwriter "SharpWitGuy" (Astoria, N.Y. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Missouri Breaks [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Hard to say why this film has fallen out of favor. Great script by Thomas McGuane (92 in the Shade), star turns by Brando and Nicholson, and excellent supporting cast including Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, John Ryan, Kathleen Lloyd, R.L. Armstrong, and others.

Story is of a cattle baron who's getting ripped off by a bunch of rustlers played by Nicholson, Stanton, Quaid and one other guy. The baron hears of a regulator (a guy who cleans up messes like that) named Robert E. Lee Clayton, and here he is, Brando in a terrific performance as an extremely unusual person, to say the least. He's basically a very nasty dandy that nobody likes. But he's good at his job--so good that...well, no spoilers here.

Nicholson is an appealing sort, just trying to get by and when he and Lloyd meet, it's a good thing. He poses as a dirt farmer to win her sympathy, all the while stealing her pa's cattle. But turns out she isn't wild about her father anyway...yep, even in those days, there were dysfunctional families.

The story is helped tremendously by the very odd quirks that Clayton exhibits, by the tension between him and the cattle baron, by the attraction of the "dirt farmer" and the daughter, and by the camaraderie of the gang. This is a lot of fun to watch; recommended.

Arthur Penn movies don't get much attention these days; basically, none of his good ones except Bonnie & Clyde are on DVD--Little Big Man, Night Moves, and Missouri Breaks are all languishing on VHS.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maltin Shmaltin., March 7, 2007

By 

John Legry (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Missouri Breaks (DVD)

Leonard Maltin calls "Missouri Breaks" a BOMB. I think he's looking in the mirror and sees everything backwards. "Missouri Breaks" is a studied, nuanced, greatly acted, directed, scored, designed, and photographed masterwork. It is pure genius from Penn, Brando and Nicholson in carefully shaded characters, and a marvelously talented supporting cast headed by Harry Dean Stanton and Kathleen Loyd. There are no false steps.

The violence Maltin decries is sudden, graphic, and realistic. It shows the brutal nature of the frontier American experience directly, without moral or relish. If anything, it is sincere reportage, which may be what Maltin really finds objectionable; we do like our pretty myths. Students of American western frontier history will instantly recognize the authenticity of setting, society, and events.

He calls it "plodding." It's about a bunch of lazy no-count horse thieves, who are at bottom just human beings with tough beginnings trying to survive in tough conditions. It is a leisured film, but not casual. The viewer enters the world on the screen, to dwell intimately therein as a participant observer, seeing at ground level how these people deal with the events of both a mundane and peculiar life. "Breaks" creates a solid environment with a natural pace that enters the remorseless realm of Greek tragedy. We watch helplessly as the players march relentlessly to an avoidable, but inevitable climax. We see the survivors in the brief still aftermath fumble for new lives, and new beginnings.

If as Maltin says, "Missouri Breaks" is a BOMB, I guess I like this BOMB VERY MUCH. It is a mature, fully realized vision, film as literature that matures like fine wine. Highly recommended for people who think. Leonard?

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrifying masterpiece, September 19, 2004

By 

Ian Muldoon (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
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A criminally underrated film (Maltin rates it a BOMB!!)which I consider one of the best Westerns made. Essentially a story of a bunch of criminals - rustlers- being brought to heal by the law represented by a ruthless landowner. However, it is also has the elements of great storytelling with good, represented by the rustlers, fighting evil, represented by the landowner. Yes , it is a clouded even twisted morality, but rings very true with many parallels to modern society. The rustlers, Jack Nicholson and his sublimely wonderful bunch which include Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid, Frederick Forrest and John P. Ryan, are trying to make their way any way they can in a hard country. The landowner, who is an educated man with a large library and has reason and business as his master, whose focus is on the percentages of profit and loss, has seen his wife run off with the first unreasonable man she could find and whose beautiful daughter offers herself to Jack Nicholson -who beds her willingly - hires a Regulator to run down rustlers. This creature of the law, a bounty hunter of sorts, a sniper, is played with eccentric and powerful relish by Marlon Brando and is truly a fearsome character.

It is a great script enlivened by humour - "why do they put Canada way up here" laments the rustlers when they venture North to rustle from the Mounties; wit; and glorious photography - the stunning shot of the foal moments before rescued by Nicholson, which stumbles towards the camera resonates as an innocent in a world of man made horror yet survives through an act of compassion by a man. This intelligent film is full of such contradictions.

It is one the most terrifyingly realistic portraits of life on the frontier. The symbolism of the Regulator shooting the cabbages on Nicholson's farm says more about violence and the law and the misuse of power than many an essay. Two scenes of man crossing the Missouri River says more about the power of nature than the nightly news of hurricanes in Florida. The brothel scene is a revealing and realistic and sympathetic portrayal of women on the frontier. To view and review over time. Brilliant.