Wyatt Russell is experiencing a career surge towards superstardom, thanks to his role as John Walker/USAgent in Marvel’s Thunderbolts*. Spending time in the MCU takes a toll on every actor. It dominates their time, so it’s good for us that this week sees Russell in a smaller, powerful drama, Broke, an excellent Western that could benefit from the actor’s rise in popularity. Hopefully, this means more people will seek out this impactful film that is both a story of redemption and a survival thriller set in the Montana world of bronco riding.
The feature debut of writer/director Carlyle Eubank (previously a writer on The Signal), Broke stars Russell as True Brandywine, a struggling bareback bronco rider in Montana. His love of the sport comes with a cost. His physical health is failing, the cost of getting knocked around night in and night out, and he copes by popping heavy doses of pills. True struggles to make emotional connections, and quietly simmers every time his father, George (Dennis Quaid), a farmer and former bronco rider himself, suggests he take on a more stable line of work. True has other skills at his disposal. He loves to draw, and has a real talent for it, something his mother (Mary McDonnell) used to nurture, but True sees it as a slightly embarrassing hobby because, y’know, it doesn’t exactly fit with the macho cowboy culture. Neither does his younger brother, Caleb (Johnny Berchtold), whose interests are more intellectual. Despite their differences, the film shows how close the two are and how much Caleb looks up to (and worries about) his big bro.
While Broke is about True’s journey to discovering who he really wants to be, you wouldn’t know it from the start. Instead, Eubank’s film begins with True, buried under snow and ice in the harsh Montana frontier. He’s in the middle of a vicious blizzard with no way to get around and no one to help him. How he ended up in this dangerous situation is something we will have to discover along the way as True’s story is recounted in flashback.
And those flashbacks show that True has never had it easy. Racked with pain, afraid of failing in his dream and disappointing his family, True is always beating himself up. The only time it stops is when he meets the beautiful nurse Ali (Auden Thornton), who encourages the best part of him. But Eubank knows that to fix all of True’s problems by giving him someone to love is way too easy. A near-fatal injury puts his career in jeopardy and that drives True towards an icy fate.
Russell has invested a lot of himself in Broke, taking on a producer role and committing to an authentic presentation of bronco riding. It’s the rare opportunity to see what he can do when given the ball and he runs with it, proving that he deserves more of the spotlight. It’s a committed performance, one that saw Russell atop real bucking horses and doing all of the lasso work himself. Westerns and horse riding run in Russell’s family. His father Kurt Russell and grandfather Bing Russell starred in many Westerns throughout their careers. And of course, Dennis Quaid is no stranger to the genre, either. It all helps to give Broke a more authentic feel.
As he does for the bulk of the film, Eubank doesn’t offer up any easy solutions for True. Even as Broke comes to a close, there’s the potential that True will overcome his ordeals to become a better man. Happiness isn’t served up to the audience easily, but the film leaves us with hope that True will find it.
Broke is available now on VOD via Sony Pictures.
