Plot: Former country legend, Misty Jones, comes out of seclusion to investigate the disappearance of her missing niece, a rising country musician, and must grapple with her own past and Nashville’s seedy underbelly. Her search uncovers a murky side of Nashville where no one, including Misty, is who they seem.
Review: Mystery thrillers have always been centered on law enforcement hunting down criminals, whether they be FBI agents, detectives, or private investigators. Every now and then, there’s been a compelling story about an average person investigating a crime on their own, despite lacking any official jurisdiction or oversight. Occasionally, upending expectations and having the protagonist be completely out of their comfort zone and trying to solve a mystery can make for intriguing storytelling. With Heartland, filmmaker Shana Feste tries to do that by making the main character, who is trying to solve a mystery, a very well-known country music singer. With a capable Jessica Chastain in the lead role, she’s both able to kick butt and sing a song, but it still fails to make very much sense at all. In fact, Heartland, once you get past the ridiculousness of the premise itself, doesn’t live up to what the trailer teases in the least. This is one of the most disjointed and nonsensical mysteries I’ve seen in quite some time, even though it does feature some memorable original songs performed by the main cast.
Jessica Chastain stars as Misty Jones, an outlaw country singer who’s fallen from grace after some much-publicized and less-than-glamorous events in her life. Living far outside the glitz and glamour of country music capital Nashville, Misty is drawn back in by her brother Donny (Paul Sparks), whose daughter has gone missing. Charlie Hart (Carter Faith), a rising singer in her own right, disappeared a week prior, and Donny enlists his sister to return to Nashville to help locate her. Reluctantly, Misty agrees, and she returns to a world she left behind. The cutthroat world of professional musicians has been fodder for numerous films and TV shows, with Nashville specifically skewered in the soapy melodrama of the same name, which aired on ABC. Heartland spends less time on the logistics of the music business, instead focusing on the missing Charlie Hart and Misty’s investigation. This includes stirring up old relationships, including her adversarial friendship with Winnie Jo Lean (Jennifer Nettles) and Misty’s ex, Clark (John Hawkes). There is also history involving music producer Roy Combs (Garrett Hedlund) and local detectives White (Norbert Leo Butz) and Kinsey (Hill Harper).
Misty is a hard-drinking and foul-mouthed protagonist; her nickname says it all. Misty is known as the “C**t of Country” and remembered less for her music and more for slashing tires and cutting people’s fingers off. While she owes a debt to her brother in trying to find the missing Charlie, Misty must contend with ghosts from her past as she returns to the world of Nashville music. Over the course of the film, Misty does not hesitate to take matters into her own hands, involving shooting, stabbing, or singing. Heartland features a full soundtrack of original songs, all performed by the main cast, with Misty stopping at several points to duet with characters throughout her investigation. No, Heartland is not a musical, but you’d be hard-pressed to find an explanation as to why, with a ticking clock for her niece’s fate, Misty would stop and sing in front of crowds either in concert venues or small nightclubs. Jessica Chastain is a solid singer, and she gives the same musical effort here as she did in the Showtime miniseries George & Tammy, where she portrayed Tammy Wynette opposite Michael Shannon’s George Jones. Misty’s brand of country music is a lot different from Tammy Wynette’s, but both show that Chastain has the chops to deliver across genres.
The trailer doesn’t reveal much about the story other than the setup of the mystery that needs to be solved. But, as with any good trailer, Heartland has a lot more at stake than what that 2- to 3-minute video would have you believe. I won’t say whether it’s better or worse, but I will say this is not the movie I expected. John Hawkes, Jennifer Nettles, David Rysdahl, and Wynn Everett amount to less than 10 minutes of total screen time between them. Most of the film focuses on Chastain along with Garrett Hedlund. Both are good, but their investigation takes a turn barely halfway through the film, transforming what Heartland leads you to believe it is and what it actually ends up being about. The film builds towards a climax that comes way too early, leaving so much time after that conclusory event that the end of the film just falls a bit flat. Maybe it’s mis-marketing, but Heartland is not as mysterious as it needs to be and not as thrilling as it should be.
Writer/director Shana Feste has tackled the world of country music before with her 2010 film Country Strong, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, and Garrett Hedlund. Where that was a true musical film about the industry, she uses more of the tropes she tackled in her supernatural horror film Run Sweetheart Run to develop the thriller aspects of Heartland. Where Country Strong really dove into why people enjoy this very American genre of music, Heartland barely scratches the surface. This film tries to make it seem like there’s a seedy undercurrent in Nashville and in the music industry itself that doesn’t really exist. Even if it does and you suspend disbelief, you almost have to think that country music stars have some sort of secret badge that lets them kick ass and take names just like a cop would. It’s almost silly that these characters are able to get away with what they do in this film. Feste’s script develops many story threads that don’t really go anywhere. By the time the film ends, I was confused, feeling like there were at least 10 to 20 minutes of development missing from this story.
Jessica Chastain alone makes this film worth watching, and to be fair, the music is pretty good. Beyond that, Heartland just doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense, and the mystery and twists that it’s trying to get you to care about are just poorly executed. If you watch this film and don’t figure out what’s really going on within the first half hour, then you need to watch more movies. Heartland is formulaic and forgettable aside from the original songs and Jessica Chastain’s always-electric presence on screen. This could have worked had it stretched out the mystery in a different way or done away with that aspect entirely and focused more on what the core of the story is trying to convey. There’s a seed of an idea in this that just doesn’t come through in the finished product. I wanted to like Heartland a lot more than I did, but this movie just doesn’t even qualify as a one-hit wonder.
Heartland is now streaming on Netflix.
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