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First released in 1976, this appealingly eccentric revisionist western highlights the critical importance of violence in establishing 'civilized' society in the American wilderness.
Jack Nicholson plays Tom Logan, a rustler in charge of a gang of horse thieves in the post-Civil War era. He decides to purchase a ranch from Braxton (John McLiam), a wealthy Montana landowner.
Logan and his fellow riders intend to use this newly acquired property as a relay-station in their operations. The autocratic Braxton, however - determined to enforce law and order by whatever means necessary - hires a legendary regulator, Robert E Lee Clayton (Brando), to hunt down those stealing his livestock...
Brando's Clayton must be a strong candidate for the most bizarre leading character in a western ever. Equipped with the name of the notorious Confederate general, he's a one-man killing machine.
He dresses in women's clothing for one of his kills (referring to himself as 'granny'), douses himself in perfume, and croons love songs to his beloved horse.
Brando's performance, which accentuates Clayton's whimsicality, effeteness and sadism, is enjoyably strange, and deliberately at odds with the naturalism of the rest of the cast.
Lightly dusted with Biblical references, "The Missouri Breaks" offers much more than the pleasure of set-piece confrontations between those two acting giants Brando and Nicholson.
Working from Thomas McGuane's richly detailed screenplay, Arthur Penn ("Bonnie and Clyde") directs in a leisurely style, showing an ability to handle rapid shifts in tone and mood, as larky comedy gives way to lethal violence.
The brilliant opening scene, in which three men on horseback cross the prairie fields before it's revealed that one of them is being escorted to his very own public hanging, encapsulates why this quirky tale continues to compel.
