Jessica Chastain’s combo of crime noir and country music needs to sing its heart more.
Despite the fact that Jessica Chastain has made a name for herself with a number of gems (“The Help,” “The Tree of Life,” “Interstellar,” “The Martian,” and “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” etc.), she hasn’t had a great year. “Dreams” started off sexy, but then deteriorated into a cynical and manipulative debacle with no redeeming values. “Other Mommy” wasn’t screened for critics, which was a warning that it would be a bad film, and the very reason why I skipped it. And now, we have her new Netflix mystery “Heartland,” which I was kind of looking forward to because of her playing a detective of sorts in the world of country music. But it ends up being pointless and cynical with too many plot twists-one of them appearing way too early in the film.
Jessica Chastain plays a former country singer named Misty Jones being called back to Nashville by her brother Donny (Paul Sparks), whose country singer daughter Charlie Hart (Carter Faith) has gone missing. The police (with Norbert Leo Butz and Hill Harper as detectives) are no help, so it’s up to her. Also in the case is Charlie’s manager Roy Combs (Garrett Hedlund) and her ex-boyfriend and other country singer (Ross Lynch), whom she collides with. And there are chases and fights in the dark every now and then. In fact, a fight between Roy and a mystery suspect is off screen, while Misty prepares to fight back.
Misty is far from happy to be back in her home town. In fact, she slashes tires and breaks windows of the people she despises with very little consequences, and talks like she has nothing to lose (when she’s called “The Queen of Mean,” she responds: “How about the “C*** of Country”). That’s how surly she is. But the film also acknowledges that she has a dark past in this town, which threatened to take away the very core of who she is. Even her former fans have turned against her.
Written and directed by Shana Feste (“Endless Love” (2014), “Boundaries”), “Heartland” works wonders with the country music, which has a lot of free spirits, and we enjoy listening to them. Chastain has sung before, even though she claims it’s “not her great love or passion,” and she can sing well with other real life country singers like Lynch. And like last year’s “The Housemaid,” one of the plot twists regards abuse, which some women can’t stand up for themselves. This one regards how female country singers are treated off-stage, and it should be spoken about.
But the movie is too perfunctory and derivative to really delve into the subject matter. It’s one of those run-of-the-mill mysteries where we’re more interested in the star power than the very nature they can provide. Chastain is the right leading lady for the role of a former country star playing detective, but her script doesn’t give her much credit. She just presides in arguments, curse words, and fights, which she does a good job displaying, but she doesn’t handle the character development and narrative as much as she should.
This is a movie that wants to be at the level of Taylor Sheridan (who won movie goers with “Scario” and “Hell or High Water” and shows with “Yellowstone” and “Tulsa King”), but it seems more at the level of Kevin Costner (and I don’t know if or when we’ll see “Horizon: An American Saga-Chapter 2”). Anyone can tell a story about country singers, and anyone can have a passion for their music. I have a passion for their music, but I don’t have a passion for “Heartland.”
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