In Heartland, a former country music star investigates a possible murder. The film takes a fresh tack on a detective mystery and it works pretty well thanks to star Jessica Chastain. But it’s a profane, hard-drinking and fairly violent country music tale.
Misty Jones left country music about 20 years ago. She was a big name at one point, with stacks of Grammys to prove it. But these days it’s just her, her dogs and whatever bottle of booze that might be taking up real estate in her fridge.
Yeah, Misty is content to stay sequestered by herself on an old pecan farm in Georgia.
Who am I kidding? Contentment’s got nothing to do with it. Misty is holed up! Life is more manageable this way. Things … happened in the past. So now Nashville, her ex and her former fans can all forget about her, just like she’s been trying to forget about them.
When Misty’s brother calls, however, forgetting the past has to take a back seat. It seems that her niece, ascending country diva Charlie Heart, has gone missing. Misty would just as soon leave her to it. But Misty is pretty much the only one in her family that knows her way around Music City. She knows people back there. Yeah, a lot of those acquaintances hate her with a passion, but still.
So Misty jams on a cowboy hat, slings a bag in her pickup and makes the unceremonious trip back to Nashville. What does she find? As she suspected: a lot of bad blood; some lazy, unconcerned cops; and Charlie’s good-for-nothing management team. The best anyone will give Misty is some lame excuse that the 22-year-old is probably off on a songwriting retreat.
Nobody will listen to Misty’s questions. Nobody will lift a finger. And nobody believes that anything is amiss. But Misty is pretty sure that her arrival has kicked a hornet’s nest somewhere because, well, people are already trying to kill her.
There’s only one thing for a former country-star-turned-detective to do: She goes on a TV show and drops some tabloid scuttlebutt. Yeah, Misty Jones is back, losers.
Let’s see what begins to cook over the media fire she’s started.
Though Misty initially doesn’t want to get involved with her niece’s disappearance, she decides to do so—and it indeed proves to be quite dangerous. But as she works to find and protect the young woman, she reveals important truths from the past and mends two different broken relationships.
We see a husband and wife move to comfort one another in separate instances. The pair is self-destructive enough that they separate, but we see evidence that they loved one another deeply. And they later raise questions about the possibility of having made their relationship work with better choices.
A woman speaks with her ex-husband and suggests that the child they bore was the best thing they ever made together. He agrees.
Misty discovers someone’s open Bible, where 1 Peter 3:1-3 is highlighted. When Misty goes to brother Donny’s house, she walks in to find a large portrait of Jesus in the entryway. She sneeringly asks where the “slaughter of the Midianites” painting went.
Misty picks up a man in a bar. The next morning, we see Misty’s bare back as she sits up in bed and pulls on a shirt. The man is in a separate bed, lying on his stomach, displaying full rear nudity.
Misty walks in on a man receiving oral sex. (We see his mostly clothed back, and all key parts are kept from camera’s view.) A drunken young woman lays in a tub of water (we see her bare shoulders). On a separate occasion, a bare-chested man sits in the same tub.
Flashes to the past show Misty and her ex, Clark, kissing and embracing.
Someone drives up behind Misty in a large truck, with a blazing strip of flood lamps on the roof, and slams into the back of her vehicle, running her off the road. Misty pulls a pistol and shoots at a man who’s trying to run her over with a large vehicle. She shoots through the windshield and hits the man in the shoulder, leaving a bloody wound. She then shoots one of the man’s front tires, flipping his vehicle and leaving him hanging out one window.
We are told that Misty once cut off a man’s pinkie finger for cheating on her. And later in the movie, she tortures a screaming man with a switch blade and cuts off his index finger (all off-screen).
During her investigations, Misty discovers several pools of blood and a sweatshirt that’s been cut by a knife blade and spattered with gore. We see a picture of a bloody pig’s heart that a stalker sent his victim. Misty also finds a large bloody, severed pig’s head in a refrigerator. A large man attacks and thumps around two different women.
A man and woman fight in a speeding vehicle, smashing each other’s heads into the windows and dashboard. Misty pistol-whips a man and leaves him lying unconscious in the road. Misty slashes someone’s car tires. A woman talks about being beaten by her husband and getting a split lip.
Charlie reveals that an older man took advantage of her and took sexually explicit photos of her when she was 16. He then used those photos to blackmail her, and he similarly abused several other young women.
There are 30 f-words and more than a dozen s-words in the dialogue, along with multiple uses each of the words “d–n,” “h—,” “b–ch” and “a–hole.” Someone spits out the c-word once. There is also a crude reference to male genitals.
God’s and Jesus’ names are both profaned a total of 12 times (including nine blendings of God with “d–n” and one combination of Jesus and an f-word).
People display offensive hand gestures.
It’s implied that Misty struggled with addiction in the past. In fact, she drinks (and gets drunk) enough in the present to suggest that she’s still wrestling with alcoholism. We see people imbibing bottles of beer and glasses of booze in numerous bar scenes in the movie. Misty also pops pain pills several times, washing them down with the dregs from an old beer bottle on one occasion.
Several people, including Misty and her ex, Clark, smoke cigarettes. We’re told that Clark is wrestling with a health malady. And so we see numerous prescription drugs and a tank of oxygen in his bathroom.
Misty’s brother, Donny, tells her that Charlie is a “good girl.” Misty scoffs at that statement. “There no such thing as good girls. You know that,” she tells him. Someone admits to, and laments, abandoning her child.
After seeing something disturbing, Misty vomits into a sink.
Heartland is something fairly unexpected. This is a gritty, booze-gulping whodunit that sifts dirt and kicks over bar stools in the underbelly of Nashville’s music scene.
There are cheatin’ hearts, deserted family members and the possibility of murder in the guitar string-twanging mix. Like any good detective tale, we’re introduced to far more suspicious characters and clues than we can keep track of. And we’re led around by a life-weary protagonist: a former country music queen, this time—played with angry vigor and spit by Jessica Chastain—who’d just as soon slash your tires and steal your dog than take any guff.
On top of the pic’s explorations of motives, means and music-star red herrings, there are also some squinty-eyed comments made about the country music industry at large and its drain-circling abusers. But there is some nice country music to enjoy on the side.
Yep, Heartland feels a little different: Fresh in some ways.
Of course, the film’s thick layer of ear-singeing profanity, heavy booze-swilling, nudity and pistol-whipping violence doesn’t feel all that fresh at all. That’s all messy and pretty old hat. It’s a messy cowboy hat, to be sure, but you’ll walk away wearing it nonetheless.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
