Heartland Sends Jessica Chastain Back to Nashville, and It Lands on Netflix November 13

Photo: Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Heartland is a Nashville thriller from Shana Feste, who made Country Strong fifteen years ago, and it puts Jessica Chastain in the role of Misty Jones, a former country star who has been hiding from the world and comes out of seclusion when her niece goes missing. Netflix put the trailer out on October 6 and the film lands on the service on November 13.

The cast around Chastain is a mix of actors and musicians, which is Feste's way. Garrett Hedlund, who was in Country Strong, is back. Carter Faith and Jennifer Nettles are real country singers playing versions of what they do, Ross Lynch is in there too, and John Hawkes shows up looking like trouble, as he tends to. The trailer leans hard on neon, bars on Broadway and a missing girl's phone.

Photo: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Chastain has not done a straight genre film in a while and I like her in this mode. She has a slightly haunted stillness that works for a woman who had everything and walked away from it. The music angle is what separates it from the dozen other missing-niece thrillers Netflix puts out every year. If the songs are good, the film will be better than it needs to be.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It is R-rated and runs just under two hours, which is longer than I expected for this kind of story. Are you a Chastain person, and does a country music setting pull you in or push you away?