Jessica Chastain Totes a Gun and Grudges in Netflix's 'Heartland'

Jessica Chastain plays a former country music star with a temper and a firearm in "Heartland," a Nashville-set thriller now streaming on Netflix. Shana Feste wrote and directed the film, which runs 1 hour 52 minutes and carries an R rating for language, some violence, and brief sexual content.

The movie opens on a striking image. Misty Jones (Chastain) sits weeping in the inky night beside a dirt mound, a shovel nearby. The review in the source notes it's the last time for a while that the erstwhile country singing sensation "will seem so tenderly wrecked."

From there, Chastain shifts into what the review calls "a honed mix of smarts and sinew that has become a trademark." Misty is Nashville's onetime "Queen of Mean." She has a temper, she has a gun, and the film makes clear she's unafraid to wield either.

What pulls Misty back to Nashville?

Her niece Charlie has gone missing. Charlie, played by country music up-and-comer Carter Faith, is a rising Nashville star — and she has disappeared before. That history matters. None of the denizens of Music City, including the police, display concern, even though the scene of her vanishing looks like a crime scene.

So Misty's brother, Donny (Paul Sparks), asks her to return to a city she hates. It's Misty's avenging anger that sets her apart — the review's dry aside: "Ask her rural neighbor."

The return puts Misty back in an industry town she was burned by and, as the review puts it, "that she torched in return." "Nashville has changed," more than one person reminds her. Among those advising caution is Roy Combs, a handsome honky-tonk owner played by Garrett Hedlund, who reunites here with Feste, his "Country Strong" writer-director.

Who surrounds Chastain on screen?

The supporting ensemble includes John Hawkes and Jennifer Nettles, a Grammy Award winner. That cast, the review argues, means Chastain "is not alone in making the movie throb."

Still, Chastain is the film's center. The review calls her "its bruised heart and best-dressed character," singling out the long, embroidered jacket Misty wears — "to die for," and, in a shadowy thriller, pointedly not a spoiler.

A nicely twangy soundtrack runs underneath it all while the film "keeps us guessing where the secrets (and Charlie?) are buried."

What does this change for viewers?

For anyone browsing Netflix, it's a straightforward proposition: a country-noir mystery with a proven lead, a music-world setting, and a running time under two hours. The film arrives timed to the Country Music Association Awards season, which gives fans of the genre an extra hook. Whether the secrets land as sharply as the jacket remains for each viewer to weigh.