StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Scott LeBrun "Bound for Glory" is a very long but utterly engrossing musical biography about an entertainer worth getting to know. That man is Woody Guthrie (David Carradine), a sign painter from Pampa, Texas during the Great Depression era. Determined to make some move away from his hardscrabble existence, and plagued by a case of wanderlust, he takes leave of his family and heads for California. This he did like so many other people of the period who believed that the West Coast held more promise. Inspired by a singer named Ozark Bule (Ronny Cox), he uses his musical talents to give voice to the scores of Americans who were struggling to get by.It's true that we don't learn a LOT about Guthrie in the course of this two and a half hour long film, but it's still easy to get involved in the story. (Which, other than a scant few people, consists mostly of fictional characters.) It can boast some truly stylish and thoughtful filmmaking, thanks to Oscar winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, screenwriter Robert Getchell (adapting Guthries' autobiography), and renowned director Hal Ashby. It does often look like a painting of this sad chapter in American history, come to life. But it goes far on the spirit of its main character. Carradine, giving the performance of his career, makes Guthrie a good, simple, pleasant person who, in the end, is true to himself. Although he is able to make a good living performing for the radio, he realizes that he has to sacrifice too much integrity in order to please greed-motivated sponsors. He tires of having to deal with people with their own agenda, and gets on the bad side of authority figures who dislike his open support of unions.Carradine is extremely well supported by a rich gallery of familiar faces, with meatier roles going to Cox, as the likeable Ozark, Melinda Dillon (who plays both the singer Memphis Sue and Guthries' wife Mary), Gail Strickland (as a rich society type who helps to run a soup kitchen), John Lehne, as the disapproving radio boss, Ji-Tu Cumbuka as an upbeat hobo, and Randy Quaid as the frustrated migrant worker Johnson. There's several other people you'll also recognize: David Clennon, Mary Kay Place, M. Emmet Walsh, Brion James, James Hong, Robert Ginty, and Bernie Kopell in an uncredited cameo as Baker the agent.The soundtrack is, of course, wonderful, with a superb assortment of Guthrie tunes; film composer Leonard Rosenman also won an Oscar for adapting Guthries' music into film score.Ultimately, this is an uplifting story; it may have some down sides along the way, but it endears itself to us the way that it portrays this entertainer who truly wanted to represent the American people.Eight out of 10.

annuskavdpol This movie is America. The musician captured the soul of America, or was it the movie that did that? Through financial hardships it seems that there was still overall beauty and love for the country to be found in every corner. The black train rolling through the country side, and the chase of the American dream, only to be confronted with desolate treatment and less then equal human rights. The downtrodden suffered greatly with zero hope. Anger and despair was reflected in the guitar music. America became the place that it is today because of people like this guitar player. Woody was so emotionally attached to the suffering of the people that he neglected himself and his family, or were the two adults just not a good match? Perhaps they did not share the same ideals. I know in my past, I found an individual, who listened to Woody Guthrie, and whom understood me, but it is only after seven years of distance, that i comprehend the depth of the connection and at the same time, the loss. Like Woody, i followed my dream and neglected family. I followed passion and fell into a dark isolation, and i wonder if this is what happened to Woody, especially since he ended up in a hospital for his final years. It is how Woody spent his last days, weeks, months that bother me. His suffering seems so great both internally and externally and even though his songs on his guitar captured human suffering in America like a photograph, I cannot help but wonder if he could not attain even an ounce of happiness in his lifetime. This movie is about socialism and communism. It is opposing capitalism. Here capitalism is not shown in a good light. It is exposed to show the suffering and slave labour of the marginalized versus the elite. In this movie, the idea of the criminal is blurred, as is it not criminal to treat individuals like slaves to make a financial profit? Who benefits? The rich or the marginalized? Who voices the concerns of the marginalized, if not for Woody Guthrie? Who voices the concerns in 2014? Are not the voices of the underdog marked as delusional, and silenced by the powerful 1 %? Or are the voices silenced because they are considered criminal in a capitalist society? How did we get to this point in revisionism? How did we get to this point in time?

jzappa There are visuals in Hal Ashby's Bound For Glory so real or so becoming that I might have to withdraw statements I've made in the past about Ashby not being a visual filmmaker. But the subdued but all-consuming absorption in the imagery eventually takes its toll on the movie's intonation. Scene after scene unfolds at such a patient rhythm, with such forecast and subtlety, that ultimately we appear to be experiencing a moving slideshow of the Depression. The film has a serious nobility and formality, which is fine---I found it fascinating that Woody Guthrie seems to take a backseat through his own biopic and that it is less about him and more about the time in which he lived---however it doesn't tend to have much life, which would be enthralling.The film maintains thorough fidelity to that adventure. Another element I admire greatly is that there's not an ingenuous frame in it, not a moment when we sense the significance of Guthrie's life has been arbitrated in favor of Hollywood license-taking. David Carradine's performance as Guthrie finds just the correct pitch between his dignity and inborn candor. There can hardly have been a period film before it with such affectionate heed to every historical detail, to the ways cars and dresses and living rooms and roadside diners looked during the Depression. We learn so much unconsciously through the mise-en-scene. All of these attributes have been treated cautiously, and with reverence. And ironically, as much as those elements are top-heavy compared to the drama itself, they are all done with the same deliberate subtlety with which Ashby lenses his other films. The imagery never points to itself; it's just there for us to subliminally take in.Nevertheless Bound For Glory is altogether a very sluggish experience. Each scene is organized so deliberately, is framed by immortal cinematographer Haskell Wexler with such virtuosity, is played with such gravity, that ultimately the movie feels too uniform. We want more drollery, more cheek, more of an clue that Guthrie had vinegar infused with his altruism. Anyone who loves movies or is intrigued by Guthrie should see Bound For Glory, though it'll be a rewarding affair that's very languid.There are two shots that are especially unforgettable: One is an incredible image showcasing a dust storm nearing Woody's little home town, and another is a shot on top of a freight train, held for minutes without a cut, while Woody and an accompanying vagabond share worldviews while the train carries them past the infinite fields, into the pitch black of a tunnel, reappears, feels about to run forever. However, the movie's political text, the doggedness of Woody and a musician friend to unionize the migrant workers, is calculable and repetitious. Guthrie's politics were evidently pivotal to his music, and yet in the film they feel virtually unnecessary. The matters of state and activism could have arisen naturally from the story, rather than being wedged in.This is not the only film I've found to be credited as the first film in which the invention of the Steadicam was used, but apparently it is, and that may account for its status as a contemporary classic. It may also largely account for the arresting fascination of the viewer with the Great Depression than the subject of the Great Depression does. So Bound For Glory isn't quite the great film it could have been. However, it is one of the most gorgeous films ever made, in its cinematography, in its locations, in its reconstruction of the America that Woody Guthrie found.

kosmasp If you would've asked me, what I thought of the movie, right after I saw it, I would've probably gave it a lower rating. But the movie grows on you. Carradine's performance is mesmerizing to say the least and his underdog is more than likable. You can see that he has his priorities straight, even if they get him in all sorts of trouble, be it at home or at work.The problem of the movie is, that it tries so hard to depict a historical character in a short period of time. Well "short" might be a stretch here, seeing that the pace of the movie itself is pretty slow, which make you think, the movie is longer than it actually is. Not really much is happening and the same issues get played twice or more times, with almost the same conclusion. The stoic Carradine character remains the same. This might be truthful (I can't say, because I haven't read any bios on the real man portrayed here), but could also become boring after awhile for quite a few people.