Chris Weatherhead
The acting was fabulous - very well done - well shot - we were surprised and impressed. The way the story was set up was shocking and yet made sense - mental deficiency is a cloudy and mysterious thing to observe in real life and very hard to act it was well - so Christopher Marquette did a great job - and evil men - as deeply evil as Vincent Donofrio's character was is also very hard to play - so the casting of those two roles as well as the brother, Jake and his fiancé was what held my interest - and I felt the cinematography was excellent. It is never clear whether it is the direction, acting or shooting that makes for a compelling story and usually it has to be all three - so, it got me. Having been in the business for many decades and knowing how hard all that is to get right, I was impressed. Hope they got their money back on it and have good memories...It was a very different journey for me as a viewer of many adventure and thriller films.
SHIVAM SHARMA
So we have a true-blue Hollywood film directed by a true-blue Bollywood director, and barring a few like Shekhar Kapoor, this feat is as rare as it gets. Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi took the drafts of Parinda and ran them over the barren landscapes of crime- infested US-Mexico border and to be fair did not make a complete mess out of it. There are enough things to appreciate here. The performances are impressive and so is the cinematography. The movie does not fail due to the want of acting chops or production quality. What it lacks is plain, strong storytelling.It had all the makings of a strong, moody tale with sparse characters and dusty landscapes of a Western. It could have even aimed somewhere between Unforgiven and A History Of Violence but unfortunately ended up way off-the-mark. The tension and mood that Chopra tries to build could have worked so well had it not been for the predictable turn of events and all too familiar tropes of brotherly sagas. Eventually, the plot just doesn't have enough conflicts and the story is much rather fit for a TV movie or a 40 minute episode rather than a 2 hour movie. Consequently, the events seem stretched and apart from the intended ones, boredom is one of the major emotions you'll feel undergoing this ordeal. The melodrama doesn't help either. Marquette has the most to do and overplays the slow-brained older brother. Anton Yelchin is controlled but it's Vincent D'Onofrio as Julius Hench who makes the movie watchable with his menacing demeanor. His overbearing persona is pitch-perfect and his performance alone deserved a better movie.It's not that Vidhu Vinod Chopra has done a bad job but he just hasn't done enough with the job at hand. What's there on the screen looks half-baked and incomplete and the movie lacks that punch and tension that you expect from a drama like this. The cinematography by the brilliant Tom Stern (long time Clint Eastwood collaborator) is the other aspect of the movie that lands it above the usual fare. 'Broken Horses' ends up as a job half done but not for the lack of resources at hand. I would still take heart from the fact that Bollywood meets Hollywood isn't the easiest of marriages and Chopra's attempt deserves attention, if only he can learn from it and deliver the next time.(Upperstall.com)
Jasrick Johal
Twenty Five years later, Vidhu Vinod Chopras Parinda has returned as Vidhu Vinod 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. 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 film that preceded it by three decades, On the Waterfront. Chopra keeps Broken Horses short and crisp at around 100 minutes, and its violence precise and clipped, a welcome break from similar films that thrive on their glorious celebration of blood. However, with a wisp of a backstory and an embarrassingly simple front one, its largely solid acting can only get it accolades it for its ambition. 'Somewhere near the Mexico border', a sheriff is killed while admiring how good a shot his elder son, Buddy â€" otherwise considered rather "slow" â€" is. The younger one, Jacky, is more inclined towards violin than guns, and is safely at school at the time. Soon after the funeral, Buddy is paid a visit at the diner where he works by Julius Hench (D'Onofrio), who tells him that "a bad man" killed his father and so he should take revenge. So while Jacky (now played by a hopelessly out-of-depth, and very hopefully curled-hair Yelchin) heads for New York and the Philharmonic Orchestra, Buddy grows up to be the henchman of Hench. Something keeps Jacky away from his hometown, and while you may think the reason is obvious, apparently the younger one has no clue what his elder brother, who can't keep no secrets, does. Jacky finds a girl, a pretty Italian no less, to marry, and Buddy calls him home to give him his wedding gift. Soon enough, for reasons that remain unconvincing, things unravel and complicate. D'Onofrio, modelled after Nana Patekar, is as ruthless and convinced of his own brand of justice, and as afraid of fire since shoving his wife and son into it. One of his "victims" though, a music teacher named Ignacio is so hilariously over the top that one can only be grateful he doesn't stick around to repeat the story about his missing legs. The best role is of Buddy, played admirably by Marquette. As the brother who has been shouldering the family manfully but is also acutely aware of his own shortcomings, he is nervous around the smarter Jacky, the powerful Hench, as well as the other smirking henchmen, and always very, very eager to please. It's a tough balancing act, to be both brave and weak. Shot by Clint Eastwood's favourite cameraperson, and with Goodfellas writer Nicholas Pileggi on board as consultant, Broken Horses also gets its settings right, from its dust-track roads and dust-lined vehicles to its one-horse towns. However, should you keep waiting for all of it to amount to something more, you would be disappointed. The moral of the story for Chopra: If you want to try something new, perhaps go for something new.
