Critic’s Rating : 1.5 Star.

Cast: Vincent D’Onofrio, Anton Yelchin , Chris Marquette María Valverde , Thomas Jane

Direction: Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Producer: Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Written: Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Abhijat Joshi

Genre: Thriller.

Duration: 101 Minutes.

For Parinda fans that squirmed at the mercurial plot twists and a powerful denouement, Broken Horses plays like a broken record. Two brothers find themselves on the wrong side of the law and of perspectives. A cliché, even in the 80s, director Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s source material gave the genre a raw brutality and a climax that was far from feel-good. He attempts to remake that grittiness with the present venture, where a white horse replaces pigeons as the leitmotif for freedom and release.



Chris Marquette plays Buddy Heckum, a simpleton who works with crime lord Julius Hench (Vincent D’Onofrio) after his father is shot (the whys and whos do not have clear answers) in order to provide for his younger brother, violin prodigy Jacob/”Jakey” (Anton Yelchin). The latter, far removed from the lawlessness of the border town near Mexico, is at home in New York playing Paganini for the Philharmonic audition.

He has to return to the town he left behind because Buddy has a wedding present that cannot be delivered but needs to be seen in person. Jakey visits, against his better judgement. As the plot conventions go, he ought to have kept away. Buddy’s decision to leave the gang for Jakey rubs Hench the wrong way. Things only slide downhill from there. Even for those who have not seen Parinda, the film winds down a predictable route of bland double crossing, plotting and endlessly verbose plot expositions.



For a Hollywood setting, the plot has a melodramatic Hindi film treatment. Some great frames (courtesy DOP Tom Stern) may momentarily distract, but there is little even he can do with pontificating characters seated between the light and dark, in a backdrop as conflicted as their conscience. For a crime drama, there is little movement or urgency. The thrills are not thrilling enough, the revelations not revelatory enough.

All characters drift in and out of the scenes in a resigned, comatose stupor, with little care for their lives or the consequences of their actions. Broken Horses goes through the motions, instead of lashing out with a fiery defiance against the perpetuated violence, like the climactic inferno. But we get neither the action befitting the genre (it is nearly absent) nor a conclusion that serves as satisfying closure. A potentially effective scene where Jakey is expected to kill an innocent man as a group induction reminds of a more suspenseful sequence in Chopra’s Eklavya, where the lead eliminates one of the antagonists in a dark cinema hall.



Lethargic pacing, lifeless performances and a less than compelling retelling makes Broken Horses worth a watch only for the patient and the curious. Otherwise, the proceedings could make you want to modify the popular Boromir meme to say, “One does not simply remake Parinda.” Devoted followers of the classic are bound to agree.