REVIEW: Breaking Habits is a dodgy doco about a dope-dealing nun who carries a machine gun

Breaking Habits seems like a compelling doco until you start prodding its selectively truthful story about a dope-dealing ‘nun’. Then some large, unfillable gaps being to appear.

If the story promised to be told by this dodgy doco was really there, then Breaking Habits would be a point-click-and-win proposition for any filmmaker.

However, in this case, there are gaps in this yarn wide enough to sail a cruise liner through.

Sight unseen, the subject matter sells itself. A solitary nun crusading against a US county’s oppressive medical marijuana laws risks life, limb and a long stretch in jail to get her healing hooch into the hands of those who need it most.

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Christine Meeusen (aka Sister Kate) in a scene from the feature documentary Breaking Habits, an Icon Films release.

It would be unwise to buy this at face value, however.

For once you start prodding at the story of ‘Sister Kate’ (real name: Christine Meeusen), the doco’s thin veneer of factual authenticity begins to break.

Meeusen is not a real nun. She invented her own order, the Sisters of the Valley, to get up the noses of local authorities, with whom she has long been at loggerheads over strict limitations on the growing and distribution of medical marijuana.

Before Meussen found her calling in the tiny, economically ravaged community of Merced, California, she lived what can only be termed a colourful life.

At least by her telling, anyway.

Once upon a time, she was a high-flying corporate consultant whose job took her around the world. Then her stay-at-home husband took off with all of the family’s money, leaving her with multiple kids to raise, and no roof overhead.

Christine Meeusen (aka Sister Kate) in a scene from the feature documentary Breaking Habits.

Forced to think quickly, Meussen’s business acumen sniffed an opportunity (and spotted many a loophole) in California’s then-fledgling marijuana laws.

Her immediate success as a legit grower (and manufacturer of grass-related side products) soon made her a target of a cynical police department.

Big wigs in the billion-dollar black market for dope in California also took an interest in Meussen’s operation, a development which has seen her packing some serious firearms heat ever since.

The filmmakers continually take this semi-shonky operator’s word as the gospel truth, particularly when there are glaring questions to be asked of Meeusen: both as the movie’s narrator and sole witness to many of the unverified events she describes.

BREAKING HABITS (M)

Rating: One and a half stars (1.5 out of 5)

Director: Robert Ryan (documentary debut)

Starring: Christine Meeusen.

Can’t see the forest for the weed

For all things movies follow Leigh on Twitter @leighpaatsch