Coming off the success of "The Godfather" and "Last Tango in Paris", one can only imagine what may have possessed Marlon Brando to team up with Jack Nicholson in an off the wall film like "The Missouri Breaks". Nicholson himself had already reached super stardom with "Chinatown" and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", so this project wasn't so much a risk for either actor as an opportunity to explore some 'outside the box' boundaries of a genre generally calling for shoot 'em up action and a clear delineation between good guys and bad guys.
The thing is, there are no good guys here. Nicholson's character Tom Logan is the leader of a gang of horse rustlers, and Brando's Robert E. Lee Clayton is a Wyoming regulator from Medicine Hat hired to take him down. Even Clayton's employer Braxton (John McLiam) operates outside the law as it were, taking frontier justice to it's limits in an early hanging scene. To describe each of these characters as morally ambiguous is an understatement, the only ambiguity might be in the timing of their firearms.
Director Penn challenges the audience a couple of times, the first of which utilizes Jane Braxton (Kathleen Lloyd) using reverse psychology on Logan to consummate an 'illegal' tryst. Later on, there's a clever juxtaposition of elements that plays out with church goers off screen singing 'Bringing in the Sheaves' as Logan's gang 'lets out' a corral full of horses.
Clever too is the way Logan and Clayton trade off their upper hands; Clayton in the cabbage patch scene letting Logan know that he knows, while Logan returns the favor in the bathtub confrontation. That's why the film's devastating finale comes as such a shock - no battle, no showdown. This is not your father's Western.
Though this might not have been Marlon Brando's strangest role, he certainly plays it like it would be. You'll catch hints of the 'Godfather' persona in a couple of scenes; feeding his horse a carrot comes to mind. For sheer brilliance, you just can't beat the sadistic enterprise of the old granny. At the same time, watch for hints of the 'Here's Johnny' characterization from "The Shining" when Nicholson's character glazes over as his gun hands go down one by one.
Speaking of which, Randy Quaid, Frederic Forrest and Harry Dean Stanton perform admirably as Logan's bunch. Each of their characters receive a creative ticket to Boot Hill courtesy of Robert E., and in true regulator fashion, not one of them saw it coming.
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