Breaker is a 2019 drama about a troubled young veteran who returns to his rural home and forms a friendship with a hermit rancher who offers sanctuary from his dysfunctional family.
If you’re familiar with early David Gordon Green films, such as George Washington and especially All the Real Girls, you’ll immediately feel comfortable with Wade F. Jackson‘s feature length debut Breaker, an intimate, deeply personal account that thrives in the authentic. It’s a simple story but sincere in its efforts, resisting the temptations of so many others like it.
J.C. Murray (Chantz Marcus) has come home from the Army but not with any glory. Discharged dishonorably for an incident kept secret for a time – he holding on to a pain from his recent past – he’s not met with open arms. His mother (Alice Barrett) barely tolerates him, she not all that stable while his older brother Harris (Eddie Baacus) and uncle Tom (Jonathan Gaietto), think him a freeloader. That’s not the case though, J.C. a good kid with a good heart in need of a break. He gets that from an isolated landowner named Finch (Peter O’Brien), who stables and pens wild horses on his massive ranch. Working with these animals, J.C. learns the value of patience and trust while dealing with his family, who seem obsessed with breaking him.
There’s a dusty lived in quality to Breaker that Jackson uses well in letting his story fan out, the wide open spaces and back county middle American life feeling astonishingly genuine. This is not about big melodramatic flourishes or emotional set-pieces but rather a slice of life in the return of a troubled youth to an even more troubled family. J.C. is a young man of few words and fewer options holding in a rage that he knows got him kicked out of the service, a guilt festering in him that he can’t control. He’s tested constantly, and finds his only refuge in the company of Finch, who has his own set of jarring haunts that when finally revealed, bind them. It’s a gut punch.
Tragedy is always moments away in Breaker, lingering like a distant cloud and while the storm does come, Jackson isn’t interested in building it to a protracted finale, the inevitable sudden and purposeful without a heavy hand. This is a quiet film about relationships and finding change in unconventional ways, Jackson looking to sidestep the traditional ultra-violence and accelerated acoustics of the genre for a more meditative redemption where reflection and forgiveness matter more than bloodshed. There is no romance as well, no girl to save this boy, a choice that I think is not only refreshing, but like much of the story, plausible.
The small budget helps a lot in getting us hunkered into J.C.’s destiny but this is not a cheap looking movie, the production gritty and sun-soaked with characters who feel rooted to the soil. There are flaws of course, the story sometimes taking us into corners we don’t really need to be, but for the most part, this is a gentle, honest little film worth exploring.