Bound for Glory

1976 biopic

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Woody Guthrie has to ride the rails after violently disrupting Uma Thurman's wedding. Along the way, he becomes a folksinging sensation and a voice for the common working man. But will his past come back to haunt him as Uma is hot on his dusty trail in her efforts to get her revenge and. . . Kill Woody!

So here's David Carradine as Woody Guthrie. He's really solid, especially when he's got a guitar, although I'm not sure I always buy him as a down-home kinda guy. I'm not sure if it was director Hal Ashby's intention or not, but Carradine stands out so much from the rest of the people on screen. And then at the same time, he doesn't quite stand out enough. Anyway, I like Carradine as the titular folky. Bound for Glory is a very good-looking movie, adequately filmed through a layer of dust for the scenes in the Dustbowl and a layer of grime for the train scenes. I like movies with lots of train action, and although there was a lot of time devoted to Woody's time hobo-ing it around, I really really likes those parts, probably because of my secret dream to someday be a hobo. Ashby and Carradine do a good job of illustrating Guthrie's importance to the folk without really getting into his importance on music in general, but that's likely because this is all based on Woody's autobiography. And because of that, you wonder how much of this you can really believe and how much of it is self-bloating. Ashby's version of Guthrie's story moves along languidly which gives somebody interested in this sort of material a chance to really absorb the setting and its characters, but I'd imagine this would get a little boring for a lot of viewers. Randy Quaid, by the way, plays a migrant worker. Why do I always assume that guy is much younger than he actually is. I just looked up his filmography and noticed that he was a Klansman in Birth of a Nation! A good look at the life and times of an American icon.