Heartland Review: Jessica Chastain Does Sturdy Work as a Hard-Edged Former Country Music Star Saddled With a Thriller in Name Only

Imagine an episode of ABC’s Nashville written by Taylor Sheridan, but despite a load of fun stuff — a disappearance, a murder plot, festering secrets, shady talent management, an obsessive stalker, a shootout, cowboy boots and Stetsons — it barely has a pulse. Writer-director Shana Feste returns to the milieu of her instantly forgotten 2010 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Country Strong, this time going several shades darker. But even after watching the suspense-free Netflix original for two hours, I had to refer to the press notes to learn that it’s a “gritty neo-noir thriller.” Sure, Jan.

Jessica Chastain stars as Misty Jones, a country music legend who fled Nashville 20 years earlier, leaving a failed marriage, a career downturn and a lot of bad press behind her. We know she’s been bruised and hardened by experience because she wears no makeup, stringy hair and ratty tank tops, living as a recluse on a remote Georgia pecan farm with her decrepit dogs. She also helpfully pops on a video of an old TV interview at one point, which should be labeled “exposition.”

Misty interrupts her life of boozing and bar pickups when her brother Donny (Paul Sparks) calls asking for her help following the disappearance of his 22-year-old daughter Charlie Hart (rising country star Carter Faith in a passable acting debut). Charlie has become a significant music figure in a relatively short time, pumping out 10 albums and touring nonstop. Even though she has gone AWOL and resurfaced in the past — showing up late or not at all for concerts and disappointing her fans — Donny is convinced she’s in trouble after being unable to reach her for three days. With his wife undergoing cancer treatment, Donny can’t go to Nashville to look for Charlie, so he convinces her abrasive estranged aunt to go instead.

Even before Misty arrives back in Music City, Donny steers her toward two suspects — Jared Granger (JP Edwards), a sicko stalker whose attentions prompted Charlie to take out a restraining order; and her boyfriend Jace Jacobs (Ross Lynch), a cocky young country rocker whose romantic duets with Charlie tell a different story to their real relationship. Neither Donny nor Misty buys the statement of Charlie’s manager Kelly (Wynn Everett) that she’s merely taking a break on a songwriting retreat.

Frustrated that the cops have turned up nothing, Misty tries putting pressure on them. But her sharp elbows get her stonewalled by Detective White (Norbert Leo Butz), who recalls she was once known as “The Queen of Mean.” “No, it was actually the C**t of Country,” replies Misty, reworking a line that once got Carlene Carter into trouble. Charlie’s history of sudden disappearances means the cops don’t take the case seriously.

Reconnecting with her old musician friend Bucky (Ben Dickey) at a bar, Misty meets record label owner Roy Combs (Garrett Hedlund), who has a reputation for launching new talents at the venue and was the architect of Charlie’s ascendancy. Despite their mutual attraction, Misty keeps Roy at arm’s length in subsequent encounters.

No sooner has Bucky warned her to tread carefully — Nashville has changed and she no longer has the protection of being famous — than Misty gets run off the road by a pickup truck while driving at night. She also comes home to find evidence of an intruder. Only when she goes looking for clues at Charlie’s house, finding blood and signs of a disturbance, then stumbles onto her niece’s bloodied sweats in Granger’s shed does Det. White announce to press that the missing person case has now become an active murder investigation.

By this point, the audience should be pulled into the mystery, especially as secrets come tumbling out, starting with a bombshell Misty drops on a TV talkshow. But Feste’s script lacks the tension or dread to build dramatic momentum, even as new elements come to light and Misty finds herself in serious danger. One problem is that two of the main suspects are too painfully obvious to be guilty, while the real culprit is easy to guess, well before Charlie turns up to provide answers.

Chastain was coached in vocals, piano and guitar for the role, doing all her own singing with assurance. There’s some appeal in watching Misty take over when antagonistic Jace pulls her out on stage during one of his shows or hearing her belt out the title song alongside country royalty Winnie Jo Lean (Jennifer Nettles, bringing strong pipes and folksy sparkle to a two-scene role).

But Chastain was better served by the twangy vocal opportunities of George & Tammy or the Gospel fervor of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which bagged her a best actress Oscar for one of her least memorable films. There’s a rich history of Hollywood actresses persuasively inhabiting country music stars — Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, Sissy Spacek and Beverly D’Angelo in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Karen Black in Altman’s Nashville — but Heartland doesn’t give Chastain anything close to that kind of space to shine. Though she does get to say lines like “I’ma go get my gun.”

Naturally, pretty-voiced Faith also performs her own songs here, as do Lynch as Jace and John Hawkes in a brief appearance as Misty’s ex-husband. The weak link in the cast is Hedlund (reuniting with Feste after Country Strong), who communicates little of Roy’s shifty charisma, beyond the sign stapled to his forehead with the word “corrupt” in bold red letters. More than any actor’s shortcomings, however, the big issue is the director’s tendency to let the film keep going slack when it should be tightening the knot. Unable to foster much emotional investment in its characters, it’s Country Weak.