This Overlooked Wyatt Russell Western Is A Must Watch For Taylor Sheridan Fans

2025's "Broke" didn't cause much of a stir when it landed in 2025, but this movie deserves much more attention. Not only will it appeal to fans of Taylor Sheridan shows, it contains what is easily star Wyatt Russell's best-ever performance and proves that Westerns are still capable of delivering powerful and moving stories.

If you haven't heard, Westerns are cool again. While the genre will never reach the kind of cultural significance it enjoyed in the early to mid 20th Century, it's no longer moribund thanks almost entirely to the efforts of one man: Taylor Sheridan. With "Yellowstone," Sheridan not only proved that there's an appetite for the Western sensibility, but that a show infused with that very sensibility can become the biggest thing on TV. Then he did it again with a bewildering and ever-expanding array of shows, all of which were propelled by the same Western ethos that had made "Yellowstone" so popular.

Now, you can't open up Netflix without seeing multiple series inspired by Sheridan's success, whether it's the "Yellowstone" replacement "The Abandons" or the Western series that dominated the Netflix charts in 2025, "Ransom Canyon." But while clearly popular in their own right, none of these shows quite manage to capture the Sheridan magic, which is essentially some nebulous combination of soapy melodrama and hard-hitting naturalism. For those who prefer a little more of the latter from their Western entertainment, "Broke" is much better than any of the "Yellowstone" clones to have emerged in recent years. In fact, it challenges Sheridan's work in an important way.

"Broke" is the directorial debut of Carlyle Eubank, who has otherwise written several screenplays, including the 2023 Aaron Eckhart/dog with titanium teeth team-up "Muzzle" and his brother William Eubank's 2014 sci-fi thriller "The Signal." With "Broke," however, Carlyle took a more grounded approach, telling the story of a bareback bronco rider who finds himself adrift after developing a head injury.

Wyatt Russell plays the cowboy in question, True Brandywine, who we initially see stranded in a desolate landscape amid a snowstorm. How he got there isn't immediately clear, but over the course of the next 103 minutes we learn via flashback how the once talented bronc rider ended up in such dire straits. Ultimately, True's life unravels as his head injury worsens and he's forced to confront an increasingly bleak future and Russell renders every moment of this heartbreaking journey with a sensitivity that should surprise anyone unfamiliar or partially familiar with his work.

Carlyle isn't interested in the melodrama of a Taylor Sheridan project. But he is interested in the question of what it means to be a cowboy in the modern world. He is interested in a naturalistic approach, and he is interested in crafting believable relationships that leave a mark long after viewing. True's relationship with a charming nurse named Ali (Auden Thornton) is particularly striking not only for the way it feels entirely realistic but for the chemistry between Russell and Thornton.

It all combines to make a neo-Western that, underneath, is really a drama in the American Neorealism vein. Not necessarily because it focuses on the American underclass, but in its stylistic approach which feels consistently authentic in a way that heightens the emotional impact of every scene.

At the time of writing, "Broke" has a 91% critic score Rotten Tomatoes, but not a single "top critic" contributed to that score. That's a shame because the film really is deserving of more recognition. Not only is this Wyatt Russell's best performance, the movie actually has something to say about how we derive purpose and meaning from our lives. In that way, it's even better than a lot of what Taylor Sheridan has produced in recent years.

Paramount+ series "The Madison," for instance, was touted as Sheridan's most intimate work to date. Star and Wyatt's own father, Kurt Russell even promised "The Madison" would directly challenge Sheridan's biggest weakness, i.e. his writing of women. But the show ultimately ended up being about how city folk can only be redeemed by embracing a bucolic, cowboy lifestyle. "Broke," on the other hand, is much more nuanced. It's a character study of a man who can't let go of what he believes is his calling, even while his refusal to relent destroys his life. It's about how being a cowboy doesn't define him despite his insistence to the contrary.

In that way, "Broke" is almost the anti-Taylor Sheridan movie. At least it would be if it didn't share so much in common with the creator's raft of shows via its exploration of modern-day ranching and the cowboy lifestyle. As such, if you're a fan of Sheridan's work and fancy something less soap opera and more serious, "Broke" is more than worth your time. But beyond that, "Broke" is worth a watch for any fan of good movies.

The film is available to stream on Netflix at the time of writing.