Tuesday, 25 August 2015

24/08/15 Broken Horses (2015)

Some, critics have bigged this film up as a bit of a masterpiece.

Here's why it's not:

The plot. Two brothers grow up in a small town, the younger one is sensitive and upon reaching adulthood, goes of to live in the big city. The other, a rather lesser-witted fellow, stays behind and makes a living as a goon for the local crime boss.

Younger brother returns and infiltrates the gang in an attempt to extract dummo from its clutches. Along the way there's the occasional shooting and beating.

The main activity of the gang of bad guys appears to be, well, just that, 'Grrr, we're baddies! Be careful around us!'

Is there anything in that plot which isn't straight out of some piss-poor Stevan Seagal bollocks? This doesn't even have the comedy value of that mumbling, tubby pensioner pretending to beat up people much younger than him.


The acting. I think Anton Yelchin has been very good in everything I've seen him in, certainly the ONLY thing of merit in Terminator Salvation. However in this he spends most of the film squeaking a few lines of dialogue and looking like he's about to cry. The guy playing his brother is less like a realistic portrayal of someone with a limited IQ, and more like someone doing a prolonged playground 'spazz' impression. Vincent Donofrio's gang leader lacks any real sense of menace and seems rather portly and camp, like a redneck version of Uncle Monty from Withnail And I.


I think the relationship between the brothers is meant to be akin to Steinbeck's Lenny and George, including the sense of trying to avoid inevitable disaster, but instead... Fuck all this, the film's shit.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2503954/
3/10

Perkin.

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