Bound for Glory

i was pleasantly surprised by this biographical study of woody guthrie. the cinematography and bakersfield settings gave this film a realistic feel. the acting was more than i had hoped for and carradine is wonderful in the lead role...

Hal Ashby's biopic on Woody Guthrie casts Woody as the communist activist as well as the traveling troubadour. It's a simple, engaging film, but suffers immensely from being overstretched and overlong. It also has too many songs which (while pretty literate for folk music) all sound pretty much the same.

Wow David Carradine is amazing in this film! The story is a little slow at times but I would recommend this based on Carradine's performance. The music is also excellent.

Flawed but likable biopic of the folk hero, with a great performance from David Carradine. But the real reason to watch is Wexler's stunning photography.

A bit slow in the beginning (some of which I think could have been cut), it took me a while to get into the story. Picked up quite a bit after Woody made it to California and you started to see his passion come to life. I would have liked to see a more extensive timeline of what happened to him after the point at which the movie ended, but all in all, a good depiction of those years of Woody's life and those years in American history. The music itself is pretty moving.

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.

I was definitely surprised (in a good way) by Carradine's performance. Apparently this film won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, and it absolutely deserved it. The long shot of Woody and Slim reclining on top of the train and disappearing into the tunnel was a thing of beauty. However, the structure of the story was a little too repetitive for me (clip of Woody singing, short dramatic scene, fight, repeat). I think Woody's life lends itself better to a documentary, not a Hollywood-type picture.

The comfy quality here is off the charts -- there's such a wonderfully realised sense of location here. This tale ain't told too bad, you can really get behind a hero like Woody in his refusal to sell out, though I feel this needed far more family conflict to make that side of his life far more interesting and investing. This also runs the risk of becoming boring with too many reiterative scenes making this film ultimately too long -- where's Roger Corman with the scissors?

A ballad of the comm(ie)on man. Easy on the politics, thankfully. Wexler dons a lush halo of spirituality, Rosenman roots it in time and place, Ashby plays it so laid back it goes overlong and repetitive. But time and place are vividly captured.

A little pedestrian but an interesting story and it evokes a time and place.

It's not bad. It captures a time and place, and springs to life a few times. The problems boil down to it being stuffy, repetitive, and a decent chunk of the family dynamic is missing.