Passion in the Old West - Reviewing "Missouri Breaks: The Ballad of Missouri Bill"
Taking a look at a charming indie Western hot on the heels of its public release.
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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I always find it heartening to see independent projects that are clearly the results of a creator’s passions come to fruition. You could argue that my reasoning for this is due to the fact that I’m an independent creator myself, one who officially became a self published author as of last November, and you would be hitting on a kernel of truth there. However, my appreciation for independent media is something that I’ve held since I was an adolescent. My friends and I often tried to create little passion projects of our own through our youth, from stories to terrible “horror” movies that were really just poorly disguised slapstick, to our own thoroughly derivative tabletop games, and even a very poorly conceived and short lived backyard wrestling league. I’m happy to say that injury was not the reason that ended, but rather the fact that our German friend’s dad was summarily prevented from filming and further encouraging our nonsense by his Austrian wife who quickly put the kibosh on our plans once she realized what we were actually doing. I may not have liked it much at the time, but I’m pretty thankful for it now. It was supremely stupid.
I digress, though. The point is, I’ve a long standing love of independent media that stretches far beyond things like the still fairly recent Iron Age movement. Even when such projects don’t work out, I’ve always found there to be something endearing about these showcases of personal effort on the part of passionate creators who just want to bring to life an idea that they love. Many times, these ideas don’t pan out as we’d like them to. Most of the time, they end up flawed. Yet sometimes those flaws are present not because you’re holding a lump of gray rock in your hands, but a rough gemstone - raw, pure, and still quite precious. Such is the case with Missouri Breaks: The Ballad of Missouri Bill, a low budget but thoroughly charming indie Western written, directed by, and starring Jarrod Christman alongside codirector and costar Weston Grillo.
I learned about the existence of this Western three days ago now. It was brought to my attention via an announcement in an indie creators community I’m a member of outside of my little circle here on Substack. Given that I’ve still been going hard on my Western kick since rewatching and reviewing Pale Rider last year, it only seemed right that I add it to my list of movies I planned to watch in the near future. What I didn’t know was that the near future would come last night, two days after I learned the movie existed. My original plan was to set some time aside to watch it on my own in my downtime, but upon telling my wife what I knew of the movie last night, she was sufficiently interested herself and suggested that we give it a watch during dinner. For what it’s worth, she also suggested I write this review once we finished the film and were discussing our thoughts on it after the fact. Naturally I was already considering doing so, but her unprompted suggestion turned consideration into a sure thing.
So what exactly is Missouri Breaks: The Ballad of Missouri Bill, other than an indie Western? Well as mentioned earlier, the film seems to largely be the brainchild of Jarrod Christman, who himself is the front man of a band of the same name, Missouri Breaks. I make mention of this from the outset because I know how some people are going to react to this. Over the decades we’ve seen multiple instances of bands and/or singers trying to break into filmmaking in various ways, usually acting, with efforts that are, to put it politely, met with mixed success. I want to assure you now that whatever shortcomings The Ballad of Missouri Bill has, they have nothing at all to do with the fact that this was a film conceived of, fronted by, and created by the lead of what I can best describe as a country hard rock band. If that concern lingers in your mind, push it out. It has no business being here.
Alas, I’ve just spent that last paragraph detailing what the film is not when I promised to explain what it is. A low budget, gritty, and passionate Western, The Ballad of Missouri Bill presents us with a view of the genre that only an indie film can, for better and for worse. It follows the titular “Missouri” Bill, a veteran of the American Civil War and a retired lawman as he attempts to secure a safe and peaceful life for himself and his wife, June. Taking place in a mountainous region of the American Midwest - it’s never specifically stated where exactly the bulk of the film takes place - Bill has opted to take on one final job to pay his way out to wherever it is that he and June may wish to go to finally settle down for good.
Now any Western fan knows what “one last job” ends up meaning, even if it’s not a job that involves violence as is the case here. Unlike films such as Unforgiven, where the “last job” involves one last round of killing for a payday, Bill’s final job is to be a right and proper cowboy and help drive a herd of Black Angus cattle. Should be fairly safe, right? Even if rustlers were to show up, Bill is both a former soldier who survived the war and an experienced former lawman. He’s also got friends with him on this run, which should ensure he’s good and safe.
Well, it’s precisely one of those friends that June sees as the problem, a fellow veteran from Bill’s old company named Shooter. June distrusts Shooter, and she’s made uneasy by the fact that he’s taking a major part in Bill’s final cattle drive. That unease is later revealed to be shared by Bill’s boss Smiley, the owner of the herd he’s driving. As Bill explains his relationship and history with Shooter in the first act of the film, Smiley tells him, “If I were you, Bill, I’d grow a pair of eyes in the back of my head.” Where Bill is holding to the fact that Shooter was once the only friend he had, viewing the man like a brother, both June and Smiley recognize the danger he represents.
The adventure from here largely follows either the development of Bill’s character and relationships during the cattle drive, or his hunt for Shooter after he’s eventually back stabbed by him. What helps to keep this otherwise simple and, frankly, rather generic Western story interesting are the method by which Christman and Grillo present it to us and the passionate authenticity put on display. Make no mistakes, this is a far cry from a perfect film. The Ballad of Missouri Bill is rife with flaws, but they’re the sort of charming flaws you’d expect out of a low budget story being told by people with a genuine passion for not only the story they want to tell, but the genre they’re telling it in. Anyone who watches this movie will plainly see that this isn’t a Western just for the sake of it. This movie is a love letter to the genre from everyone involved in the film’s creation. It might be a messy and clumsy love letter, but it remains an expression of adoration all the same.
So let’s begin first with what works for me. As expected from an independent film, there is very little in the way of set work involved in this movie. Most of The Ballad of Missouri Bill was filmed on location, and the results speak for themselves. The fields and vistas we spend our time in throughout most of the movie are absolutely stunning, a true showcase of how beautiful the wilds of the United States still are. I can’t recall who wrote it last year, but I read a brief essay from one of the writers I follow here who wasn’t an American born citizen wherein he discussed the many things he still found wonderful about America.1 One of the biggest is our nation’s enduring natural beauty, which can still easily be found in many places. This film showcases the truth in that sentiment wonderfully.
What few sets were used are used to good effect, and scenes taking place in them tend to be a bit shorter, which is to the film’s credit as it’s the scenes taking place out in nature which are the most visually compelling. And you will get a lot of them, too; the vast majority of the film’s setting is presented through the forests, fields, mountains, and creeks, or sitting around campfires on dark nights as the characters carry on discussion. Speaking of the characters, Bill himself is another major strength of the film, which I’m happy to say considering he is by far the character we spend the most amount of time with.
Played by the man at the head of it all, Jarrod Christman himself, Bill comes off as a charming and relatable character. He’s not breaking any molds within the genre, but he’s a protagonist my wife and I both enjoyed following, and that’s due in no small part to the fact that Christman arguably is the strongest actor in this film. Smiley, played by Rooney Schoonover, puts in quite a good effort himself, presenting a kind and aged rancher who’s a man of few words, but who’s soft spoken demeanor still gives off that suitable sense of wisdom and trust that it feels like Bill needs sometimes. By that same vein, June’s work in the second scene of the movie is also quite good. Played by April Christman, presumably Jarrod’s wife though I haven’t been able to confirm this,2 her argument with Bill about not trusting Shooter and not wishing for him to go on that last job carries an extremely believable tension to it while never devolving into the sorts of shouting matches we come to expect from movie arguments. This results in a subtlety that’s very welcome in the scene, though it’s unfortunate that this is her only speaking moment in the movie.
The story itself is compelling and generally well told, though it relies heavily on exposition in the first half. This isn’t surprising considering The Ballad of Missouri Bill is an indie film. The discussed scenes of conflict from the Civil War, as well as the direct aftermath of some of Shooter’s decisions and the troubles that came about from Bill’s time as a lawman in Tennessee, were likely too expensive to capture effectively. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to be shown these scenes, but such is the way of budget constraints. Fortunately, as mentioned earlier, Jarrod Christman is the film’s strongest actor and as such he delivers this exposition in a way that still succeeds in holding your attention, though it does result in the film feeling a bit slow and ponderous at times.
Luckily it seems that Christman and Grillo were aware of this problem and worked out a method to help counter it. That method comes in the nonlinear fashion in which the film’s story is told. When we begin the movie, the opening scene we’re shown comes after Bill has already started taking his fight to those who wronged him in the second act. That scene plays out, then transitions directly into his argument with June. It’s only once he goes on the job and we see the same kid he was forcing into compliance at gunpoint working alongside him that we realize that what we saw at the start probably wasn’t a glimpse into Bill’s past, but his future. This sort of back and forth hopping helps to keep the story a bit more engaging, dropping in pieces of valuable information as and when we need them. Personally, I found this to be an effective way of rousing up my excitement when the story was really starting to kick into gear.
Costumery and sound design were also generally well handled, though not without their problems. While many of the leather and metal props looked fantastic and the outfits were generally very good, there were times where things looked a bit too clean given the setting and the work the characters were meant to be doing. Makeup did leave something to be desired, too. While there are certainly instances of it being well used, such as the scene shown in the trailer where Bill’s face is muddied and bloodied and some of the work done to create bruises and black eyes, there were other times where it looked noticeably fake. The most egregious example of this is probably when June gets struck in the face by an assailant and is meant to be forming a red welt next to her mouth. Instead of looking like a welt that will turn into a dark bruise, it looks more like someone smeared bright red lipstick halfway up her cheek with a thumb.
Which comfortably leads us into the aspects that I think didn’t work so well, one of them being the soundtrack. As one might expect given that this movie was made by a band, they do feature some of their own music in it, and for the most part that works just fine. As I recall, it was really only one song of their own that Missouri Breaks used in the film. Whether or not it was written for the film I can’t say as I’ve not listened to them before watching the movie, but I will say that its second use does work better in the film’s context than its first. Hearing a hard country rock ballad blast out during what is at that point a peaceful cattle drive is a little bit jarring and did lead that portion of the film to feel more like a music video than part of a movie.
Where the soundtrack really did start to become a problem is the dark fiddle motif that’s used throughout the movie. Again, for the most part I found the repeat use of this motif to be fine. As someone who enjoys consuming bad movies for a laugh, including many bad indie films, I’m never surprised to hear indie soundtracks that only feature three or four tracks throughout. This particular motif was a good choice for setting the tone and atmosphere of the movie, for the most part. The unfortunate problem that always comes with the repeated use of a single motif is that you will almost inevitably come to scenes where that motif isn’t the right fit, and there were enough instances of this with what I’ll henceforth call Bill’s theme that I couldn’t help taking notice.
Another issue is the acting from characters who aren’t Bill. Again, this isn’t surprising from an indie film, so this isn’t a huge knock against this movie by any means, but pretty much every other actor in this movie is fairly wooden. I did note exceptions earlier in Smiley and June, but they’ve got their issues in this respect, too. It’s really only Christman himself who maintains a consistent level of quality in his acting across the movie, which is to be expected considering this seems to be chiefly his passion project.
Now, at this point you might’ve noticed that there’s someone who I’ve mentioned very little in this review, a certain member of this story who’s set up as the demon from his past that Bill will eventually have to face down. That is, of course, Shooter. More than any other element of this movie, I believe Shooter is the part of it that will become the single most contentious. For as important as he’s meant to be in Bill’s story, Shooter never once receives a line of dialogue, is only shown directly interacting with Bill on a few occasions, (and he’s attempting to kill Bill in most of those) and never has his face revealed to the audience.
Let me begin by saying I get what Christman and Grillo were going for here. Shooter isn’t meant to be a character as we’d normally understand the term. Rather, Shooter is a representation of the mistakes and regrets of Bill’s past, a living embodiment of his trauma from the Civil War and the violence he witnessed later as a U.S. Marshal in Tennessee. From a conceptual point of view, it’s a solid idea, and if The Ballad of Missouri Bill either had a higher budget that allowed us to see the events Bill tells us about in the first act or was written as a book instead, I think this technique could’ve worked wonderfully. However, I have to review the film on the merits it has, and for me, this decision proved too high minded for what they had to work with, and so doesn’t really work.
This isn’t to say we didn’t get anything good out of this choice, though. One of the best scenes in the final act of the movie hinges on the fact that we’ve never seen Shooter’s face. To avoid spoilers I won’t go into detail about what exactly this scene is, but suffice it to say that it’s filmed in such a way that it opened the possibility of the film mixing in a psychological drama twist that had the potential to be genuinely fascinating if it were followed through on and handled well. That path ultimately isn’t taken, but I can’t help but wonder what my final thoughts would’ve been had they gone this route.
Nevertheless, we got what we got, and I certainly enjoyed the movie for what it was. However, the handling of Shooter is going to remain a sticking point for me, as I do believe that with the budget this movie had the film would’ve been better served by actively showing and developing the fraying relationship between Shooter and Bill instead of leaving all of that to exposition and metaphor. There is something to be said for subtlety, that is absolutely true, but this is one case in which I found the attempted subtlety ultimately took away from the final product instead of adding to it.
Even with this being the case, I probably would watch this movie again sometime. As I said earlier on, it’s plain to anyone that watches it that everybody involved with this film’s creation - which, by the way, includes a couple of our very own from here on Substack, such as
who helped to design the film’s poster - has a deep running love for the Western genre that shines bright through every minute of this film. If you’re a fan either of indie films or Westerns, then I’d say this movie is worth the hour-and-a-half of your time that it asks. There are certainly far worse ways to spend that time than immersing yourself in a project that while flawed, still absolutely drips with the most pure sort of passion.You can find Missouri Breaks: The Ballad of Missouri Bill for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.
My first novella, In the Giant’s Shadow, is available for purchase! Lured to the sleepy farming community of Jötungatt by a mysterious white raven, Gaiur the Valdunite soon finds herself caught in a strange conspiracy of ritual murder and very real nightmares.
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I want to say it was either
or , but for the life of me I can’t remember if I’m right and I can’t seem to find the essay in question. Forgive me for the tag if I’m wrong, guys, but it’s nagging at me now!I only stress this as presumption because it’s possible she could be his sister or something like that, I don’t know the details of Jarrod Christman’s life and would rather not make an erroneous assumption.
Well done! 😎💪
OOOO I am so happy to see this on here!! I love Jarrod and his Indie movie - and I love you too! I am planning on watching this for a family movie night!