Oscar Winner Delivers Knockout Turn as Feisty Country Star

Detailed summary

Shana Feste’s film may not seamlessly blend its disparate genre impulses, but with its star crooning, carousing, and cutting off her enemies’ appendages as a disgraced singer back…

Country music loves tough-talking, rule-breaking outlaws, and Jessica Chastain has a ball playing a furious renegade on the warpath in Heartland.

Shana Feste’s film may not seamlessly blend its disparate genre impulses, but with its star crooning, carousing, and cutting off her enemies’ appendages as a disgraced singer back in her old stomping grounds, it offsets its predictability with knockabout ferocity.

Chastain’s performance is so big, brash, and blistering in Heartland that it’s a shame the film isn’t debuting on multiplex screens. Nonetheless, it plays just fine on Netflix (Nov. 13), blending murder mystery and Crazy Heart-esque country music industry drama to pulpy ends. The tale of a former chart-topper searching for her missing up-and-comer niece, Feste’s latest is a lot like the tunes it showcases: catchy, straight to the point, rife with bold emotions, and as interested in tearful confessions and reunions as it is in drinking, swearing, and fighting.

After burying her dog in her yard, Misty Jones (Chastain) visits the neighbor responsible for this death—a confrontation that concludes with her shooting up the woman’s front windows as a warning. This immediately establishes Misty’s ferociousness, just as the sight of a Grammy award in her fridge suggests that her once-celebrated career has gone off the rails and her one-night stand with a guy she picks up at a local bar (and unceremoniously kicks out of bed the next morning) indicates that she loves as hard as she lives.

In a 10-gallon hat with a look of perpetual fury on her face, Chastain stalks through Heartland like a bitter firebrand, and her go-for-broke ruggedness energizes the fleetingly scripted proceedings. The morning after her latest sexual conquest, a hungover Misty is invited to the home of her brother Donny (Paul Sparks), who informs her that his daughter Charlie Heart (Carter Faith)—a rising country star—has been missing for three days.

Misty was booted out of Music City thanks to a flameout…

Aft…

Opening of the article, excerpted from Daily Beast. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.