Vidhu Vinod Chopra's English Film Broken Horses is a different, yet emotionally packed take on the American Wild West, set somewhere near the Mexican border.With heavy doses of bromance, the tale delves on the bond between two orphaned brothers. It explores their sensitive and caring nature towards each other.Narrated in a linear fashion, it is the story of Buddy Heckum, a sensitively hooked slow learner, his musically inclined younger brother Jacob Heckum, who is also known as Jackey, and a conniving gangster Julius Hench, who in order to safeguard his own interests tries to separate the two brothers. This forms the crux of the tale.Fifteen years ago after the death of their father Gabriel Heckum, the Sheriff of this border town, the boys are left to fend for themselves. Julius takes Buddy under his wings and instigates him with, "There are lots of bad people out there, somebody got to stop them… Miguel Stanton killed your dad and you cannot let him get away. You kill him."Buddy takes revenge. This "job" was his initiation into the crime world. And in order to protect Jackey from his world of crime, the ever caring older brother packs him off to New York to let him pursue his dream of becoming a violinist.Years later, Jackey plans to get married and settle down with Vittoria (Maria Valverde).Buddy insists that Jackey return home to have a look at the surprise wedding gift he has in store for them. The gift was "a promise he had made".Jackey obliges. It is then, when he is in his hometown, that Jackey learns about Julius' sinister plan and the film garners momentum.Broken Horses is Christopher G. Marquette's turf. He engages you as Buddy and gets you hooked. He alternates between a simpleton and a pigheaded revenge-seeking mercenary hit-man with equal ease and grace.Anton Yelchin as his younger brother is sincere. The fear and concern for his brother is palpable on screen.Of the rest of the cast, Sean Patrick Flanery as Jackey's music teacher, with his amputated legs is a bit dramatic and unconvincing. Maria Valverde as Vittoria, the only woman in the male bastion to have some credible screen moments, is functional.There are some subtle emotional moments between Buddy and her which are touching. Vincent D'Onofirio as the sweet talking, pyrophobic villain is not at all menacing.With not enough weightage given to the sub-plots, the overall piling of the plot seems superficial and shallow, especially the passage when Jackey goes to interview Mario Garza, the rival gangster. Also, the metaphor used in that scene is trite and oft seen in gangster films.Though this is an original story by Vinod Vidhu Chopra, Broken Horses finds its genesis in numerous older films, which includes Chopra's earlier film Parinda. But what makes it stand apart is its treatment.The intelligently written screenplay and dialogues, especially the summation of the title of the film, by Chopra and Abhijat Joshi, more than make up for the deficit in the design scheme.Tom Stern's camera work is excellent. He has a flare for wide angled panoramic shots. Some of the shots of the Wild West and Jackey's Ranch, captured in the twilight zone are worth noticing. So is the underwater shot during the climax.Well mounted with good production and technical values, the film has an inexplicable gentleness to the narration, very characteristic of Vidhu Vinod Chopra. It will appeal to the emotionally inclined.

As "Broken Horses" was drawing to a close, I formulated my review. I had just one sentence: "You could do worse than spend a totally free evening --when there's no cricket, even--watching this movie."It is just a yarn, spun without imagination, and that yarn isn't substantial enough to be woven into a unique design.There were a couple of twists and turns, some modicum of suspense, many efforts to get the tear ducts opening, but all through I kept thinking, "This is kind of embarrassing." If the movie theater had been full, I dare say there would have been guffaws at the flat story-telling and the clunky dialogs. That would have amused me.With movies on familiar themes you want slick treatment, snappy dialog, and a sound-track that tells some of the story without the aid of words. And in this movie where music is a major theme, I really missed the magic an original score and sound-effects can play.That's it. You aren't likely to go bananas about any aspect of this film, except may be the photography. Having seen this, I am not dying to see "Parinda" either.

Broken Horses is broken on so many levels. To begin with, I will take the kid who can't act first. Whoever did the casting concentrated on his features alone, that and how much he would resemble Chris Marquette growing up. As the lame boy struggles with his lines without an expression on his face, Thomas Jane goes on to show his acting prowess by imparting brilliant gravity to his role.We soon meet a guy called Hench played quite beautifully by Vincent D'Onofrio. Surprisingly his entrance and introduction to the tale gets smeared by poor direction. An unimportant dispensable element to the story was Ignacio played by Sean Patrick Flanery. He gets lost in a pointless plot. So does a horse that was merely kept to justify the movie moniker, and also to blast out five seconds after two bullets get fired.Chris as Buddy seemed as if he was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. The plot that surrounded Garza too was an exercise in futility.Screenplay is really poor. The drama also doesn't stir you up. Actors seem to act on preordained tracks. The score is average albeit occasionally the violin would take things up for a while. The direction is quite mediocre and scrambles awkwardly with a predictable plot. It lingers along with the poor editing of the movie and goes on in a weird pace.There is one scene wherein the camera captures Buddy in the background mourning as his brother beseeches Hench to let him help his brother out. I didn't comprehend why was there a need to take all three of them in a single shot? He looked more animated acting at a distance, unfocused, mourning, simply spoiling the gravity of the talk. Even little things in the movie are explained or told by actors taking audience for fools. For instance, as we see a grown up Buddy version he instantly tells his brother that he had a haircut. I mean, why do you even need to spell it out? We knew who he was! Du-uh!The movie being a Vidhu Vinod Chopra flick, I went in with high expectations. That could have been the cause of my big disappointment. There was nothing thrilling. Just a bland tale projected with a bleak vibe.Eventually, I would still call it an average flick uplifted only because of Vincent and Anton's performances. However, I would suggest you pass this one!

It feels like an attempt to create dramatic violence similar to Martin Scorsese but this plan goes south super fast.The typical formula of two brothers whose father is killed before they are men. The oldest brother becomes a bad guy in order to take care of the younger brother assuring he becomes a good guy, And just when the good guy's life is about to turn great, he decides he needs to see his brother after years of silence to make life perfect,but of course things go bad when this happens.The characters were not as stereotyped, as I make it. They had some death to it and it was well executed by the actors playing these characters. The story was a good one as well.But the filmmakers style needs work. I just saw that this movie was written directed and produced by an Indian filmmaker. It could have been culturally I did not find the dramatic pauses appealing, just overall melodramatic, but I'll give him points for not going all Bollywood on me and sliding in musical numbers that made no since( and I can see places in the movie were he could have done that)Yeah, I found it more silly than anything so I won't recommend.