April 09--"Broken Horses" raises the question of what is cockamamie, and what is cockamamie and outlandish and ridiculous yet a perfectly swell time for those very reasons.
This one's just cockamamie without the swell part. It's a loose English-language remake of the Mumbai-set 1989 crime saga "Parinda," co-written (with Abhijat Joshi) by director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, shooting his first feature in America. Chopra and Joshi hatched the idea to Americanize "Parinda" after seeing Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," which was adapted, successfully, from the Hong Kong thriller "Infernal Affairs."
There's no reason "Parinda" couldn't have made for a modest yet satisfying relocation effort; the remake takes place somewhere along the U.S./Mexico border, probably in New Mexico, based on one lawman's Caballo badge. So why does "Broken Horses" refuse to cooperate?
Casting is a big problem. Anton Yelchin and Chris Marquette play long-separated brothers, Jake and Buddy, who have grown up in this Neverland of a mountainous desert. In the prologue, the boys are played by younger performers; their sheriff father (Thomas Jane) is quickly shot and killed by an unknown assailant, and we see Buddy taken under the wing of the local cigar-chomping, Stetson-sporting, Hank Quinlan-in-"Touch of Evil" crime boss named Julius Hench. He's portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio, and now and then, when delivering a line while flicking a dead bug off his rearview mirror, for example, D'Onofrio reminds us what character actors often do for a living: add the spice to a pretty dull pot of chili.
Jake, a sensitive violinist, goes to New York; Buddy, a borderline cretin but pure of heart and moist of eye, stays behind and becomes Hench's beloved henchman. Years later, Jake returns home. (Maria Valverde plays Jake's intended, in a blandly supportive nothing of a part.) The city boy gets off the bus with his fiddle just in time to become embroiled in his brother's murderous activities; to kill a man who's trying to kill him; and, on Hench's behalf, to pose as a journalist to interview a Mexican underworld baddie (Jordi Caballero).
There are secrets and revelations in "Broken Horses," none of them revealing. Often, Yelchin looks dazed, standing mutely while the angsty Marquette emotes his backside clean off. The expression on Yelchin's face suggests a man coming to the realization that his film is not working.
The same director's "Parinda" followed the Bollywood custom of interpolating song and dance into any and every genre of movie. I wish "Broken Horses" had gone all the way and given everyone at least one number. Instead, we settle for labored scenes of self-conscious montage (a string of hotel assassinations cross-cut with shots of an orange getting squished in a juicer) and Marquette's Buddy, grinding every little dialogue exchange to a dead halt for another round of tears.
"Broken Horses" was filmed in Death Valley and in Victorville, Calif., the latter being the real-life locale of the dude ranch where "Citizen Kane" screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz sobered up long enough to revise "Citizen Kane." Several scenes unfold in Hench's lair, an abandoned movie theater, where Buster Keaton's "The General" plays in the background as D'Onofrio plots his next move. Sounds novel, no? And yet the results lie there, loxlike.
In "Parinda," one of the brothers speaks of "rotting away in America." The remake suggests a movie made by the "Parinda" character while he was stuck out West without much to do.
"Broken Horses" -- 1.5 stars
MPAA rating: R (for violence and language)
Running time: 1:41
Opens: Friday
mjphillips@tribpub.com
