HARD-CHARGING

Oscar Winner Delivers Knockout Turn as Feisty Country Star

Jessica Chastain gives a big, brash movie-star turn in Netflix’s “Heartland.”

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. Charlie apparently has a habit of going off the grid, so Misty isn’t immediately concerned. However, at Donny’s urging, she reluctantly agrees to travel to Nashville to see what she can learn about the girl’s whereabouts.

Misty was booted out of Music City thanks to a flameout that involved missed shows, falling off stage, and slicing off her ex-husband’s pinky finger. This earned her the nickname “The Queen of Mean” (as well as another moniker not fit for printing), and she’s hardly greeted with open arms upon her return.

After a chat with club owner Roy Combs (Garrett Hedlund), Misty is run off the road by a pickup truck with blinding hunting lights, and when she tries to file a missing-person report, Detective White (Norbert Leo Butz) nastily reminds her of her prior infractions. She’s persona non grata in the country music capital of the world, and she responds by doubling down on her aggressiveness.

Misty’s relationship with Charlie, it turns out, is more complicated than it initially appears, and revelations about their bond add urgency to Misty’s quest to find out what happened to the young woman. At Charlie’s home, she discovers a new composition with ominous lyrics about death and secrets, and Chastain’s performance of the song is the first of Heartland’s musical centerpieces.

With a soundtrack of original tracks (from, among others, Faith, co-stars Jennifer Nettles and Rosh Lynch, and Chastain herself), the film has an authentic country spirit that goes hand-in-hand with its unaffected and inviting feel for its Nashville milieu, whose sunshiny surfaces mask ugly realities, be it shady contracts and predatory producers, or artists who, in pursuit of spotlight dreams, let advisors and managers work them to the bone.

Heartland’s songs aren’t as good as, say, A Star Is Born’s hits, yet they’re engaging enough to help sell Chastain’s Misty as a real artist in a real scene. At the same time, though, Feste’s film turns its heroine into an amateur sleuth, stumbling upon crime scenes, sneaking around forbidden areas (to locate and steal keys and documents), and having perilous encounters with attackers.

With Roy’s help, Misty sets her sights on Charlie’s no-good singer-songwriter boyfriend, Jace (Lynch), as well as her stalker, Jared (J.P. Edwards). For her troubles, she winds up in a world of hurt—both physically and, because of the long-buried traumas and demons this mission unearths, emotionally.

Given that there are only a handful of characters in Heartland, and even fewer well-known actors, deducing who’s behind Charlie’s disappearance doesn’t require Sherlock Holmes-grade intuition. Fortunately, Feste leans less heavily on the whodunit aspect of her story than on her portrait of country music as an arena where misogyny runs rampant.

Charlie’s current ordeal and Misty’s notorious past are linked by sexism, which manifests itself not simply through overt violence but, additionally, via gossip, slander, and unjustly ruined reputations. Sprinkle in a heap of guilt and regret over momentous decisions that led to strained relationships and painful estrangements, and the material is overflowing with ingredients for a CMA contender.

Chastain’s output of late has been so varied (and uneven) that it’s a pleasure to see her in a brassy, full-tilt role that fully leverages her marquee magnetism. As Misty, Chastain rages and weeps with an almost total lack of inhibition, and the sheer dynamism of her turn fuels Heartland during its cornier and more obvious moments. Whether in a Stetson, a white undershirt, or a fancifully sequined jacket, the actress—downing Crown and Cokes as heartily as she stampedes over anyone who gets in her way, and exhibiting a particular fondness and flair for firearms—is a force of honky tonk nature, elevating the action through sheer movie-star charisma.

It’s too bad that Misty’s investigation is so personal—and so fully resolved by film’s end—since she’d make for a fascinating recurring gumshoe. Still, in a cinema universe that wants to transform everything into a franchise, there’s also something refreshing about Heartland’s self-contained nature.

Moreover, it’s a small miracle that Netflix let Feste tell this tale in a two-hour feature rather than a bloated eight-episode series—a welcome fate we can all joyously sing about.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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