If you like your country music stars to be one part Olivia Benson in Law & Order: SVU, one part Liam Neeson in Taken, and one part LeAnn Rimes/Shania Twain without having the requisite skills for most of that combination, boy do I have the movie for you!
From writer/director Shana Feste (Country Strong, Run Sweetheart Run) and super producer Peter Chernin, Heartland is the confounding new country-music-centric mystery thriller starring Oscar winner Jessica Chastain (The Good Nurse, The Eyes of Tammy Faye) as former country hitmaker turned no-nonsense, guns-blazing Nashville castaway Misty Jones, a woman hiding out on a pecan farm in Georgia with only her aging dogs (what is left of them after the opening scene—IYKYK, yikes!), the Grammy award in her fridge, and a strong dependency on alcohol to keep her company. But after decades in seclusion, a call to help in a family emergency brings Misty back to Nashville as she spearheads a search for her missing niece, budding young country star herself, Charlie Heart.
Forced to face down her troubled past and the reasons that led to her departure from the country music capital, Misty conducts a private investigation of her own after the law and Charlie’s management team seem to be content sitting on their hands and hoping that this wayward young woman comes back on her own as she has done several times over the past year. Confronting those who refuse to do their job, as well as Charlie’s stalker, Charlie’s boyfriend, and anyone who gets in her way, she exposes the dark secrets of the Nashville scene, exposing people for who they truly are and getting to the harsh reality surrounding her niece’s disappearance.
Alongside Chastain, the film also stars Garrett Hedlund (Tulsa King, Tron: Legacy) as manager Roy Combs, Oscar nominee John Hawkes (True Detective: Night Country) as Misty’s former husband Clark, Paul Sparks (House of Cards) as Charlie’s father Donny, Norbert Leo Butz (A Complete Unknown) as Detective White, as well as musician/actors Carter Faith as Charlie, Ben Dickey as Buck, Ross Lynch as Charlie’s boyfriend Jace, and Sugarland standout Jennifer Nettles as Winnie Jo Lean.
Heartland. (L-R)) Garrett Hedlund as Roy Combs and Jessica Chastain as Misty Jones in Heartland. Cr. Tina Rowden/Netflix © 2026.
While much of the previous description of Heartland may not strike you as all that odd, the practice and performance of parts of that description, surrounding the behavior and motives of Chastain’s Misty Jones, are where this movie goes down south. If your elevator pitch to sell this movie sounds anything like, “What if Shania Twain or LeAnn Rimes or the like dealt out their own brand of shoot-and-smash vigilante justice in the name of family while occasionally belting out country tunes on stage and making TV appearances?”, I’d hope most people’s reactions would be in the category of shock and bewilderment with a side of “Why?” But the creators of Heartland and their “Forget it, Jake. It’s Nashville” bravado felt emboldened to make a highly implausible conceit, wrap it in a blanket of well-known talent in both Hollywood and the Opry, and let it all cook no matter how unlikeable or misguided it can be.
The most charitable of reads for Feste’s story is one of female empowerment and family unity hitting back against a system run by corrupt and abusive men who oppress, trap, and manipulate young, talented women for their own gains and power. However, between the film’s leaning into the multiple mysteries at hand—why Misty left Nashville, what happened to Charlie, and who is at fault in all this—and the complete absurdity that a former country music superstar would have the detective skills and gun acumen needed to take down a corrupt operation on all fronts without getting arrested herself from the jump, Heartland swerves in and out of plausibility too many times to have what could have been a strong multigenerational feminist confrontation of an industry that may deserve it.
Heartland. Carter Faith as Charlie Heart in Heartland. Cr. Tina Rowden/Netflix © 2026.
The only thing I cannot account for is if this movie just simply may be for someone else to enjoy. Is this movie meant for the country music faithful? Or perhaps for the people who intimately know that the Nashville star pipeline is drowning in corruption and toxicity? Does the inclusion of the particular lineup of musically inclined actors (or acting-capable musicians?) make this movie more appealing regardless of how cartoonish and poorly written many plot points may be? I don’t fall into many, if not all, of those categories, so it is hard to say for sure. However, I would hope that even the die-hards would be able to know convenient exposition and eye-rolling shootouts when they see it.
Without exposing some major spoilers in the mystery revelations and family drama, I would encourage anyone who watches Heartland to take in the film’s final moments and ask yourself, “Was this what the movie was all about?” Was it about Misty healing from her past? Why did she have to be Dirty Harry to do it, and how did she get there? Did you find those family moments in the climax to be heartwarming?
It’s hard to take much away from this film, but what is clear is that Shana Feste has a soft spot for aging country stars. But unlike the more charming yet familiar beats of the comeback story of Country Strong, Heartland feels wrong-footed and hard to root for almost from its opening moments. The one-woman army that is Chastain’s Misty feels more sloppy than earned or understood on paper and tonally uneven in performance. It may be my Northeast coastal living that could be clouding some of the finer qualities of the location and culture, but Heartland does hit the right notes to be successful no matter who you are and what playlist you’re on.
Heartland. Ross Lynch as Jace Jacobs in Heartland. Cr. Netflix © 2026.
Watch Heartland If You Liked
- Country Strong
- Crazy Heart
- The Eyes of Tammy Faye
MVP of Heartland
Garrett Hedlund as Roy Combs
This is not an endorsement of the actions and sliminess of Roy Combs, but in a movie filled with characters that don’t make sense or work in many ways, Garrett Hedlund knew the assignment with the seedy, lying, duplicitous figurehead, or as Misty Jones puts it, “a garden-variety man-in-power piece of sh*t,” that was Combs. He has the charm and looks to seem like the support you’d need while selling the extremes when the devil comes out. It may be straightforward, but it’s also what the movie needed to stay on the tracks as much as it could.
Hard to understand the motivations for making a mystery thriller with a former country legend as a “mess around and find out” Dirty Harry-type investigator with incredible shooting abilities, and less understandable taking in the results. Heartland may try to sell a country-music-branded feminist rebel story against a toxic masculine power structure, but its implausible & unrelatable characters and head-scratching antics cloud any true takeaways from this story.
