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Top-rated miniseries! Academy Award? winner Robert Duvall (1983 Best Actor in a Leading Role Tender Mercies) and Academy Award? nominee Thomas Hayden Church (2004 Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role Sideways) star in this moving Western drama.Set in 1897 Print Ritter (Duvall) and his estranged nephew Tom Harte (Hayden Church) become the reluctant guardians of five abused and abandoned Chinese girls. Ritter and Harte’s attempts to care for the girls are complicated by their responsibility to deliver a herd of horses while avoiding a group of bitter rivals intent on kidnapping the girls for their own purposes. Classic Western action takes center stage in this dramatic miniseries!SPECIAL FEATURES: Making of Broken Trail – The Making of a Legendary Western Sneak Peek at Hustle on AMCSystem Requirements:Running Time 240 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396157170 Manufacturer No: 15717

The lives of two stoic cowboys and five abused Chinese women become intertwined in Walter Hill’s sprawling miniseries Broken Trail. Print Ritter (Academy Award winner Robert Duvall) and his nephew Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church, Sideways) agree to deliver a herd of 500 horses from Oregon to Wyoming. Along the way, they rescue the young women–most of them still just girls–who’re being transported to a brothel to have their virginity auctioned off. When the madam sees she is about to lose the girls, she screams at Tom, “What about my property?” He shouts back, “That’s the price of being a capitalist, lady.” Unable to overcome the language barrier, Print assigns numbers to the girls. Number 3, Sun Foy (Gwendoline Yeo, Desperate Housewives) is the most fearless and perceptive of them. Though the others don’t want to be called Number 4–an unlucky numeral in their homeland–Ye Fung (Olivia Cheng), the most tragic of the group, doesn’t care. Targeted for her beauty, she finds herself unable to overcome the trauma. The number suits her, in her mind. Along the way, Print and Tom rescue Nola Johns (Greta Scacchi), the proverbial hooker with the heat of gold, who was forced into prostitution after her husband died.

The cinematography is gorgeous as the camera sweeps over the lush landscape (the Canadian Rockies subbing in for wild West of the late 1800s) and Hill does a formidable job of pacing this 3-hour drama with just the right balance of dialogue and action. For Duvall, Broken Trail is the last piece to his Western trilogy, which started with the miniseries Lonesome Dove followed by the feature film Open Range. He is instantly likeable as a father figure and the viewer never doubts that his intention for the girls is honorable. As for Haden Church, he has never been as appealing as he is in this role. Gruff and flawed, he softens when he exchanges shy glances with Sun Foy. The trek is long and hard and the unlikely band of travelers will face much hardship. If not as satisfying as the rich, detailed Lonesome Dove, Broken Trail makes up for it with a wonderful storyline and some fine acting by all involved. As for the conclusion, it may surprise some viewers who are expecting a more traditional version of the happy ending. –Jae-Ha Kim

True Western
Excellent rendition of time on the trail drives. Thomas Hayden Church shows more acting depth than previous roles have allowed. Duvall, great old cowboy, as usual….more info

“So I went and got our horses and our money… had to stretch a fella… and you start a finishing school for Chinese girls.”
Walter Hill’s Broken Trail is a good but at times a little too leisurely Western miniseries following Robert Duvall and his nephew Thomas Haden Church as they try to drive a herd of horses across country only to become sidetracked when they find themselves the unlikely guardians of five Chinese girls being shipped to a brothel – and the target of some bad men determined to relieve them of both…

It’s curious how Robert Duvall, and actor who came to prominence playing a mob lawyer who deposited horses heads in peoples’ beds, has evolved into the kind of archetypal Western figure of unquestioned decency you’d be happy to trust your life to – even more so when you remember he tried to kill John Wayne in True Grit! If he shoots someone seemingly out of the blue, you know it’s someone who needs shooting (although much of the action takes place offscreen) such is his moral stature. By contrast, Church seems uncomfortable and out of place – he does well enough, but they never strike the sparks that made Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones’ relationship in Lonesome Dove so memorable and affecting. And Lonesome Dove does unfortunately cast a giant shadow over this: it may be a smaller story, but, especially after Open Range, you expect more when Duvall gets in the saddle.

Despite that, it’s an engaging enough amble and extremely well made. Hill is one of the few working directors who still know the power of an extreme long shot, giving the show an occasional sense of the epic, though this is sometimes undercut by the fact that he generally plays his scenes in medium shots. More focused than his intriguing but scattershot Wild Bill but less impressive than The Long Riders or his under-rated Geronimo: An American Legend, it’s worth a look, but you might just want to spread it over a couple of nights.

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