Missouri Breaks

Does anyone remember the 1976 movie Missouri Breaks (Brando/Nicholson)? Did the opening scene have Nicholson running from Old West lawmen? Does anyone remember what river he crossed or what jurisdiction he crossed to or from? Thanks for the help.

First of all, that's not the opening of The Missouri Breaks (1976). It's the opening of Goin' South (1978).



In the opening scenes Nicholson's character, a horse thief named Henry Moon, is trying to outrun a posse across the desert to Mexico. He beats them across the river to Mexican soil, but as he hops off his horse in celebration it collapses from exhaustion and the posse, including deputies played by Christopher Lloyd and John Belushi (in his film debut), simply cross the river and apprehend him anyway, even though technically he has escaped.

The movie is a comedy set in the 1860s and does not spend a lot of time on the specifics of where the town is, exactly. The window of the bank says it is Jefferson County, Texas, though looking at a map that wouldn't make it west or south enough to have him crossing the Rio Grande, which is presumably what happens in the opening scene.

The film, directed by Nicholson himself, was actually shot in Durango, Mexico.




The Missouri Breaks, made a couple years earlier and directed by Arthur Penn, also stars Nicholson as a similar type of character and similar themes, though that one is a drama and involves rustling over the other border, into Canada. It's also a huge disappointment, wasting the only on-screen pairing of Nicholson and Brando.

But it's definitely Goin' South that you're looking for.

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Missouri Breaks was a big disappointment with most of the critics at the time but I always enjoyed it. I think that it is one of those movies that will get better with age. There wasn't much of a plot but I just enjoyed watching Brando have a good time.

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That's great info...thanks for the help...

Brando certainly has fun chewing the scenery, there's no denying that. It just doesn't add up to a good movie, and Brando's Martian antics don't gel with anything else going on in the story. Given the cast, which in addition to Nicholson and Brando included Harry Dean Stanton and Randy Quaid, teaming with director Arthur Penn who had been on quite a roll including Bonnie & Clyde, Little Big Man and Night Moves, it had the potential to be much, much more. It's watchable, but very disappointing.


BTW, I don't believe I've ever told the story here of director Arthur Penn basically apologizing for and dismissing The Missouri Breaks at a film festival I attended....



It was the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, back in the fall of 1998. Arthur was there with a couple of his movies (Mickey One and Alice's Restaurant). After the screening of Mickey One he stayed for a nice, long Q&A. Somehow it got around to the topic of The Missouri Breaks, and Penn explained that they all knew the script (by Thomas McGuane) wasn't ready and they should take another six months or so to refine it into something good, but the window in the schedules of Brando and Nicholson to shoot the movie was closing quickly. They had to decide whether or not to go for the sake of going, even without much of a script, or wait and see if somehwere down the line in a year or two they could maybe get Marlon, Jack and Penn's schedules to all line up again. I think Penn said one of the filmmaking Guilds was threatening a strike at the time as well (though now I don't recall which one), so that added some "now or never" pressure to the process, too.

The producers (Elliott Kastner, specifically) decided they didn't want to risk not pairing Brando and Nicholson up, so Arthur Penn was asked to go into production with a screenplay he knew wasn't going to give them much to work with. As a favor to Nicholson, Robert Towne came in for a week or so and did a quick, uncredited pass, but Penn still wasn't happy with it. They shot the film in the wiles of Montana, trying to improvise as they went - especially Brando. As Penn didn't have anything better anyway, he kind of let them go, against his better instincts. The resulting film is a hollow, badly paced movie with momentary flashes of something interesting here and there, but really a waste of the only time the great actors Brando and Nicholson shared a screen together.

And that's how movies get made sometimes. Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Also that's why you should attend film festivals (even the little ones); you get cool anecdotes like that.



The Missouri Breaks was released on R1 DVD in late 2005. Too bad Penn wasn't allowed to do an honest audio commentary track, giving real life examples of how business decisions can screw up a movie even with great people involved.

Goin' South, on the other hand, I really like and find generally underrated. It's not a perfect movie by any stretch, but definitely a fun little piece with an amazing cast, including Mary Steenburgen in her film debut. As I said earlier, it's John Belushi's first flick too, which very few people realize (they assume it's Animal House).

I always suspected that Missouri Breaks was one of those films in which the director completely lost control of Brando, so that you ended up with the rest of the cast making one movie over here and Brando just ping-ponging around doing what he liked over there. Surely it wasn’t Penn’s idea to have Brando speak like the leprechaun in the “Magic Charms” cereal commercials! And what was it with the hats? A Vietcong straw hat, Mexican sombrero, derby, head-rag, sunbonnet—everything but a tiara!

I’m still puzzled by that scene where he rides up hanging off the side of his horse out of sight. I lie awake nights wondering how they filmed that scene without the ponderous Brando pulling that poor horse over on him.

I am sure it wasn't him on the horse

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