Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s maiden Western venture – Broken Horses – starts off from an assassination – A sheriff is shot to death, as his teen son – Buddy – watches in horror. The incident brutally changes the lives of Buddy and his younger brother. Soon, the slow-witted, credulous Buddy gives himself to a bloody business, so that the younger one – a softer, smarter Jacob/Jakey can live a good life.
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The film is a remake of Chopra’s 1989 film Parinda – a crime-drama film starring Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shrof, Nana Patekar, Madhuri Dixit and Anupam Kher. It stars Vincent D’Onofrio, Anton Yelchin, Chris Marquette and Maria Valverde in the lead roles.
Thirteen years after the assassination, the siblings reunite in their violent, dusty home town near the Mexican border, ruled by a gangster – Julius Hench. Jakey, who was sent to the city to study violin, comes back after a gap of eight years, to see Buddy’s wedding present for him. He discovers what his brother does for a living. While making efforts to pull Buddy out of the bloody business, Jakey gets entangled in the crime maze.
Although the characters in the movie are Americans, you see that the film might as well be set in an Indian small town – The making is very Bollywood-ish. There are melodramatic moments in plenty. The heroine is a puppy-eyed, angelic city-bred girl. The climax sequence is accompanied by turbulent background score. And every scene foretells what would happen in the one that succeeds it.
For instance, when you see Jakey and his girlfriend Vittoria spending a romantic evening in that beautiful ranch, which lies in the middle of an abandoned piece of land, you sense something bad is going to follow. Similarly, guessing the climax isn’t tough either.
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There are portions where the narrative gets overtly dramatic and ludicrous. When Jakey fails to attend his girlfriend’s phone calls, the girl shows up at his door. She isn’t angry or tensed, just sad and teary-eyed. She is kind towards Buddy, even though she knows it’s Buddy’s inaneness that’s ruining her and Jakey’s life. Jakey, on the other hand, appears to be someone who wears a deadpan expression even when he’s doing the most dangerous things. His marriage is just a few days away and he has a lucrative job in hand. But the musician wittingly joins Buddy in one of his risky, bloody missions to save Buddy from getting killed and to take him out of Hench’s kingdom.
What fails Broken Horses is that it doesn’t have an identity of its own. It borrows one from a Bollywood film, which was released 25 years ago. Chopra’s international debut is neither moving nor gripping, but it does induce many a yawns.