The title of the film refers to a forlorn and very rugged area of north-central Montana, where over eons, the Missouri River has made countless deep cuts or "breaks" in the land.

Logan and his gang then buy a small farm close to Braxton's ranch with money they stole during a train robbery, and begin rustling his stock.

First the gang, without Logan, rides across the Missouri River and north of the border into Canada to steal horses belonging to the North-West Mounted Police.

The theft initially goes well, until the Mounted Police catch up to the gang, forcing them to abandon the stolen horses and flee for their lives.

Braxton is incensed with both his rustling problem and his daughter, and sends for Robert E. Lee Clayton, a notorious Irish-American "regulator", who for a price, will take care of the rustlers.

Identifying himself under the pseudonym of "Jim Ferguson", he kills Logan's young friend Little Tod, who cannot swim, by drowning him in the Missouri River.

Finally, Clayton arrives at the gang's hideout one night and sets fire to the house, forcing a burning Cal to run to the river and throw himself in to extinguish the flames.

)[2] In a May 24, 1976 Time interview, Brando revealed he "changed the entire flavor of his character—an Irish-American bounty hunter called 'Robert E. Lee Clayton'—by inventing a deadly hand weapon resembling both a harpoon and a mace that he uses to kill."

"[3] Brando broke the monotony of the production by playing childish pranks with rubber spiders and eggs as well as frequently mooning the cast and crew.

[4] He would interrupt shots with bizarre behavior like biting a chunk out of a frog during a river scene and taking potshots at grasshoppers instead of his firing a gun at co-star Nicholson as scripted.

During the second week of filming in Nevada City, intermittent rain showers hit the area, which made the entire cast and crew more bedraggled than the script had depicted.

A narrow-gauge car was lost for a week while en route from Chama, New Mexico to Harrison, Montana, which arrived after being held in Salt Lake City, Utah for interstate transportation permits.

When questioned, the film's production executive, Jack Grossberg, said Jug hit a car body with one hoof, had a heart attack, and then died of shock.

[6] Coming on the heels of Brando and Nicholson's Oscar-winning turns in The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest respectively, the film was highly anticipated, but became a notorious critical and commercial flop.

In 2003, Xan Brooks of The Guardian wrote: "On first release, Arthur Penn's 1976 Western found itself derided as an addled, self-indulgent folly.

[11] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.