I am not a country music fan and must admit I would never have even known about this movie if I hadn't gone down the YouTube rabbit hole about Tom Hiddleston. When I saw his a capella performance of Your Cheatin' Heart on YouTube, which is the opening scene of the movie, I was blown away. Because of that, I watched the movie. Turns out, I'm very glad I did. I had no idea of the volatile and tempestuous life of Hank Williams, nor of how much of an impact he had on musicians who followed him. An artist tormented by physical pain and substance abuse is hardly a new story, but Tom Hiddleston did a masterful job of conveying how that torment influenced Williams' music. Hiddleston is taller, better looking, and (heresy, I know) possibly even a better singer than Hank Williams, but no one could have been more convincing. This movie deserves a lot more attention than it got upon release. I highly recommend it.

Saw this last night on one of the pay channels and I thought Tom Hiddleston was wonderful. I'm not a fan of Hank Williams, but I am of Hiddleston and I thought he did a good job. There wasn't much character development and I wasn't given a chance to really care about his struggles. There was no chemistry at all between Olsen and Hiddleston. I've seen both of these people in better movies. In the hands of the right person, this could have been really good. It might have been better as a limited mini-series. It seemed rushed and his struggles, personally and professionally, were glossed over. Williams was only 29 when he died. That's incredibly young - he hadn't even reached his prime! Imagine what he would have done had he taken better care of himself. But then again, that may be why he was such a soulful singer.

I am very disappointed by this movie. I gave it 5 stars because of the performances and production values, which were both very good. Tom Hiddleston, of which I am a fan, delivers a great performance, as he usually does, and it was a pleasure to hear him sing. He seems to have put a lot of effort to put himself into the character, and I salute that. Elisabeth Olsen, as Audrey Williams, is also excellent.However, the movie itself is extremely bland. Even a film based on real life events needs to have a story arc in order to engage the viewers. There's factual, and then there's boring. There was no story in this movie, just (sometimes very) short sequences from Williams' life in chronological order. The first half of the movie was particularly jarring, as we moved from one event to another, without time to feel the impact of one scene before the next arrived. I'm not calling for melodrama, but this first half was as engaging as a Wikipedia page. It did get slightly better in the second half.For a musical biopic, there was a surprising lack of focus on music. Sure, we were shown musical performances, but we weren't shown a lot of context around them, making them seem more decorative than part of the story told. Maybe the film was made only for aficionados who already know everything about the country & western music business from the 40's? I doubt it. My biggest disappointment is that, apart from making me listen to beautiful songs, this movie completely failed to show me how important Hank Williams is in the history of music. If I had never heard about him (and before this year, I had never heard about him), I would be baffled as to why they felt it was important to make a movie about him.I could understand their choice to focus more on Williams' personal life, if they had made it interesting to me. But the movie is as unemotional as they could have made it. The direction is so detached that I sometimes felt like I was watching some sort of existential comedy, a la Coen brothers. Maybe I'm slightly exaggerating, but I did laugh at some scenes that I don't feel were supposed to be funny. I could not be invested emotionally at all, with the exception of a very few scenes. I really blame the direction here, because the actors did give emotional performances. It just seemed that the director didn't want us to feel any empathy for anyone.

I Saw The LightThe number one threat to a country music star's career is their successful transition into pop music.Unfortunately, the cowboy crooner in this biopic didn't live long enough to employ auto-tune.Repetitively rejected from the Grand Ole Opry for his youthful inexperience, Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston) wasn't able to strike a cord with promotes, fans, and later Hollywood, until he started composing ditties inspired by spats he had had with his singing partner and wife (Elizabeth Olsen).But just as those hit records were rolling in, Hank's dalliances, hard drinking and drug use derailed his meteoric rise. Although Hiddleston is able to embody the honky-tonk hero in appearance and essence, his vocal range is lacking that hillbilly twang. Meanwhile, the laborious script and ham-fisted director are more concerned with chastising him for his faults than celebrating his triumphs.Incidentally, sex with Minnie Pearl was not the cause of his death. Red Light vidiotreviews.blogspot.ca