Broken Horses

2015
5.7| 1h41m| en| More Info
Released: 10 April 2015 Released
Producted By: Reliance Entertainment
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

The bonds of brotherhood, the laws of loyalty, and the futility of violence in the shadows of the US Mexico border gang wars.

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Reviews

Karry Best movie of this year hands down!
Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
Joe I don't get it. This movie has some high levels supporters (such as James Cameron) praising the movie, yet I can't see in any way how they are able to back it up. We have here a film centring round two brothers, who are caught in the middle of a corruption ring. One brother is slow witted and is being used whilst the other is trapped in his efforts to help his brother.It's about brotherhood, loyalty, blood etc etc. The problem is that it just isn't gripping. The storyline is mostly poor and nothing complex, but the underlying themes need something challenging. It's absent here.The main leads are fair enough and not big names, working hard with the material in front of them, but they can little save this.The cinematography is beautiful and so is the natural scenery, but that's as good as it gets.Not by any means the poorest film of late, but one that I can't seem to like. If it wasn't for the major sponsors of this film it likely would never have got any of the attention it ever did.
Sohom Pramanick Vidhu Vinod Chopra's English Film Broken Horses is a different, yet emotionally packed take on the American Wild West, set somewhere near the Mexican border.With heavy doses of bromance, the tale delves on the bond between two orphaned brothers. It explores their sensitive and caring nature towards each other.Narrated in a linear fashion, it is the story of Buddy Heckum, a sensitively hooked slow learner, his musically inclined younger brother Jacob Heckum, who is also known as Jackey, and a conniving gangster Julius Hench, who in order to safeguard his own interests tries to separate the two brothers. This forms the crux of the tale.Fifteen years ago after the death of their father Gabriel Heckum, the Sheriff of this border town, the boys are left to fend for themselves. Julius takes Buddy under his wings and instigates him with, "There are lots of bad people out there, somebody got to stop them… Miguel Stanton killed your dad and you cannot let him get away. You kill him."Buddy takes revenge. This "job" was his initiation into the crime world. And in order to protect Jackey from his world of crime, the ever caring older brother packs him off to New York to let him pursue his dream of becoming a violinist.Years later, Jackey plans to get married and settle down with Vittoria (Maria Valverde).Buddy insists that Jackey return home to have a look at the surprise wedding gift he has in store for them. The gift was "a promise he had made".Jackey obliges. It is then, when he is in his hometown, that Jackey learns about Julius' sinister plan and the film garners momentum.Broken Horses is Christopher G. Marquette's turf. He engages you as Buddy and gets you hooked. He alternates between a simpleton and a pigheaded revenge-seeking mercenary hit-man with equal ease and grace.Anton Yelchin as his younger brother is sincere. The fear and concern for his brother is palpable on screen.Of the rest of the cast, Sean Patrick Flanery as Jackey's music teacher, with his amputated legs is a bit dramatic and unconvincing. Maria Valverde as Vittoria, the only woman in the male bastion to have some credible screen moments, is functional.There are some subtle emotional moments between Buddy and her which are touching. Vincent D'Onofirio as the sweet talking, pyrophobic villain is not at all menacing.With not enough weightage given to the sub-plots, the overall piling of the plot seems superficial and shallow, especially the passage when Jackey goes to interview Mario Garza, the rival gangster. Also, the metaphor used in that scene is trite and oft seen in gangster films.Though this is an original story by Vinod Vidhu Chopra, Broken Horses finds its genesis in numerous older films, which includes Chopra's earlier film Parinda. But what makes it stand apart is its treatment.The intelligently written screenplay and dialogues, especially the summation of the title of the film, by Chopra and Abhijat Joshi, more than make up for the deficit in the design scheme.Tom Stern's camera work is excellent. He has a flare for wide angled panoramic shots. Some of the shots of the Wild West and Jackey's Ranch, captured in the twilight zone are worth noticing. So is the underwater shot during the climax.Well mounted with good production and technical values, the film has an inexplicable gentleness to the narration, very characteristic of Vidhu Vinod Chopra. It will appeal to the emotionally inclined.
DareDevilKid Reviewed by: Dare Devil Kid (DDK)Rating: 2.8/5 starsTo the Hindi film audience in India, "Broken Horses" comes across as nothing more than a 2015 reworking of Vidhu Vinod Chopra's seminal 1989 crime saga, "Parinda". The similarities between the two films are so prevalent and irrefutable - motifs, characters, the plot, even scenes - that to a person who has watched "Parinda", "Broken Horses" feels like that film with a different cast, and therein lies the biggest glitch with the veteran filmmaker's Hollywood debut. Chopra's "Parinda" has basically returned 25 years later on-screen as Chopra's "Broken Horses", with Mexico's dust bowls replacing Mumbai's mean streets, a ranch on a lake replacing a crucial boat, two brothers joined by love and circumstances now also tied by a slight mental disability, and a lot less blood and a lot more conscious style. As for a person who hasn't watched "Parinda" - and most of Chopra's Hollywood audience would fall in that category - this film feels rocky, with certain parts of the story not quite adding up. What could have been acceptable in a 1989 Mumbai, is not quite so on the 2015 Mexico border.So while Chopra's "Parinda" was a pathbreaker in 1989, giving the first gritty portrayal of the underworld in Bollywood, his first Hollywood venture won't make any waves on those well-trodden shores. Particularly as "Parinda" itself drew comparisons with a classic crime film that preceded it by three decades - Elia Kazan's Marlon Brando starrer, "On the Waterfront".The ensemble cast does a commendable job, with D'Onofrio, Marquette, Yelchin, and Valverde all coming across as believable. Nana Patekar's pyrophobic Anna Seth of "Parinda" sees a parallel in D'Onofrio's Hench, who has an irrational nervous breakdown on seeing a burning candle in a church. Marquette is convincing in his role as Buddy, a man who is somewhat slow, but impeccable with the gun and his fists, and is easily brainwashed. Yelchin is passable as the violinist who needs to dirty his hands to save his brother. Valverde's Vittoria evokes copious pathos and admiration for the composure and resolve she displays under trying circumstances, regardless of the minimal screen time she gets.On the technical front, Tom Stern's cinematography is par excellence, and is among the stronger points of the film - shots of the Mexican countryside are beautifully captured. A scene that particularly stands out is the one where the extraction of orange juice is interspersed with goons being killed. On the editing front it seems that Todd E. Miller's scissors were a bit too sharp and snappy, which could probably be the biggest reason that "Broken Horses" doesn't retain even a semblance of "Parinda's" excellence. The producers needed to understand or Chopra himself should have convinced the producers that a story of this magnitude needed the runtime of a Bollywood film, if it had any chance of creating an encore of the multi-layered depths and rich character arcs of its source material. The soundtrack does justice to the film, but doesn't stay with you once the curtains come down.In all, "Broken Horses" is nothing but "Parinda" with western actors and without the same impact. While "Parinda" was a brilliant gangster movie and way ahead of its time, this one doesn't impress as much. That isn't saying "Broken Horses" is a bad film; it's more than a decent crime story, and can even be enjoyed to a moderate extent. But the fact that it's an adaptation of what could easily be considered among Indian cinema's 10 finest films ever, and the very same Director - an ace filmmaker no less - who helmed that film comes up short in this adaptation; stirs a level of infuriation and frustration within you, especially for those who loved "Parinda". Watch it if you're keen on seeing what the first Hollywood film written, directed, and produced by an Indian filmmaker is like. Else, just treat yourself by re- watching "Parinda" all over again.
maclock I expected more of this film. Performances offered by Vincent D'Onofrio normally impress me, but this movie is so overwhelmingly bleak, the story so implausible, and the characters -- Buddy, Jakey, and Vittoria aside -- so unlikeable, that even his performance could not save this underwhelming picture. I will say this: the cinematography was amazing. I had a real sense of place the whole time that I watched it in the cinema.If you can suspend reality and accept the completely implausible premises set up by whoever wrote this mess of a movie, then you may well leave the theatre raving about what an excellent film it is. You may even mumble that the principals involved and the actors featured in it deserve consideration for various prizes. Not me, though. I can accept that it is alright, but I will not be singing its praises anytime soon. I would take a pass on Broken Horses if I were you.

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