Review of Country Strong (2010) by Turtle T — 29 Aug 2011

Shockingly fantastic. Beautiful, thought-provoking, and heart-wrenching. The best acting of Paltrow's career. The best singing I've heard in a film (greatly aided in my mind by the fact that country music has a specific twang and accent that the actors had to achieve to make this entire journey believable.

In addition, Tim McGraw is a wonderful actor. The story has everything I wanted from a movie and told a completely different tale than the shallow and mediocre trailer. My only critique was Meester's handling of the Chiles character.

The depth was there, but she didn't do anything with it or roll her history into a complete and interesting package. This could also be a failure of writing and the reality of cut scenes, but if this character gap was not present and the character Chiles pulled it together to achevie the depth of the other characters, this could be a near perfect film.

My only other critique would be that the film seemed to drag in two places for about 2 minutes, but the action within those scenes was necessary to the overall feel of the film.