Jessica Chastain plays a bruised country music legend on a remote Georgia pecan farm in Heartland, a Netflix neo-noir thriller released on Friday, Nov. 13.
Writer-director Shana Feste returns to the world of her 2010 Gwyneth Paltrow film Country Strong with a darker tone, The Hollywood Reporter reported.
Misty Jones interrupts her life of boozing and bar pickups when her brother Donny calls asking for help finding his missing 22-year-old daughter, Charlie Hart. Rising country star Carter Faith plays Charlie in a passable acting debut. With his wife undergoing cancer treatment, Donny convinces his abrasive estranged aunt to go to Nashville instead.
Donny steers Misty toward two suspects before she even arrives in Music City. Those suspects include Jared Granger, a sicko stalker who prompted Charlie to take out a restraining order, and her boyfriend Jace Jacobs, a cocky young country rocker played by Ross Lynch.
Neither Donny nor Misty buys the statement of Charlie’s manager Kelly that the singer is merely taking a break on a songwriting retreat. When Misty tries putting pressure on cops who have turned up nothing, Detective White stonewalls her.
“No, it was actually the C**t of Country,” Misty replies to Detective White when he recalls she was once known as The Queen of Mean, reworking a line that once got Carlene Carter into trouble.
Reconnecting with her old musician friend Bucky at a bar, Misty meets record label owner Roy Combs, played by Garrett Hedlund. No sooner has Bucky warned Misty to tread carefully than she gets run off the road by a pickup truck at night and finds evidence of an intruder at home.
Only when she goes looking for clues at Charlie’s house and finds blood does the case escalate. Detective White announces to the press that the missing person case has become an active murder investigation after Misty stumbles onto her niece’s bloodied sweats in Granger’s shed.
Feste’s script lacks the tension or dread to build dramatic momentum as secrets come tumbling out.
Chastain does all her own singing with assurance after being coached in vocals, piano and guitar for the role.
The weak link in the cast is Hedlund, who communicates little of Roy’s shifty charisma. The big issue remains the director’s tendency to let the film keep going slack when it should be tightening the knot, leaving the two-hour Netflix original a suspense-free experience.
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