Broken horses: Very bollywood, thus un-hollywood

Broken horses
Starring: Vincent D'Onofrio, Anton Yelchin, Chris Marquette, María Valverde, Thomas Jane
Rated: 5/10
It’sParinda reborn, albeit a tad differently, somewhere near the Mexico border. In the 26 years it took to make this journey to the otherside of the world, to another film industry, to another cinematic terrain, altered its DNA so much that potential got a beating and impact a drubbing.
So, only thing good about this one from Vidhu Vinod Chopra is the courage of the man to produce a Hollywood film on a Bollywood sequence, and the stunning visuals that dot his effort. Other than that, it is a film that Hollywood doles out every once in a while when it decides to get emotional about violence, blood-shed and stark territory existence.
So, here we have a somewhat mentally retarded older brother (Buddy) who drops out of school to take care of his younger more accomplished violin prodigy brother (Jakey) and the only way he does that is to become a henchman of a ruthless, unscrupulous baddie — the counterpart of our very own Nana Patekar in Parinda.
Like Nana, he is devilishly un-queasy about murders like burning his wife and only son alive for trying to escape his regime, like cutting off his son’s music teacher’s legs for aiding them, like killing his own man to keep Buddy away from Jakey.
In that sense, Broken Horses is very Bollywood with emotionalism but sadly very un-Hollywood in the rest of the compartments. As a first-time effort, it’s a good bit of courage, a little bit of flourish and somewhat of a hotch-potch. That’s pretty un-VVC. 
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 12 April, 2015

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