User Reviews

This film is about a guy who had integrity. He couldn't be bought off. He didn't sell out. Woody Guthrie felt his music. It came from a sense of caring about people. As a film, "Bound for Glory" does a ten-star job of conveying the spirit of a man who could joke when the chips were down and who could sing out with an affection his listeners could believe. Guthrie made music move people to see themselves as worthwhile, as creators of vitality, gusto and dignity. And he did this during the Great Depression.

People, especially people in the industrial world, feel less and less a sense of connectedness to each other. Community tends to lose quality as the rule of quantitative cheapness triumphs. The more the narrow, modern sort of individualism envelops them, the more humans slip into an alienation reinforced by commodified cocoons.

Wage-slaves we are and wage-slaves we were in the 1930s. Only back then, we still had some remnant of solidarity, some spark of humanity to touch each other with. We still do, but it's fading fast. Woody's life was about fanning those embers into flames as people worked for wages, while others, the unemployed and under paid caught up in the depression of the Great Depression, wondered whether their families and other families like them would ever make it. Woody came from them and he sang for them. Woody was a working class hero, a modern day troubadour. He infused his listeners with his humorous, never give-up gumption, which, if you weren't lucky enough to know him personally, came out in waves as you drank in his warm words and tunes. Woody made them feel that maybe they could be bound for glory!

If you find this movie on the rental shelf, pick it up and see it. It's great. I especially loved the scenes with Ozark Bule (played by Ronnie Cox). He must have been something. The first time you see him, he stands up on his vehicle near some unemployed field workers and sings the old IWW song composed by Joe Hill: ************************************************** Long-haired preachers come out every night Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right But when asked about something to eat They will answer in voices so sweet

'You will eat, by and by, In that glorious land above the sky Work and pray, live on hay - You'll get pie in the sky when you die' - that's a lie!

And the Starvation Army they play And they sing and the clap and they pray Till they get all your coin on the drum Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum . . .

Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out And they sing and they clap and they shout 'Give your money to Jesus,' they say, 'He will cure all diseases today . . .

Working folks of all countries, unite Side by side we for freedom will fight When the world and it's wealth we have gained To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

You will eat, by and by, When you've learned how to cook and how to fry Chop some wood, it'll do you good Then you'll eat in the sweet by and by - that's no lie! ************************************************************

And David Carradine (Bill of "Kill Bill" fame) would never do acting as fine as this again. His Guthrie is near perfect, one level above Gary Cooper's portrayal of Sergeant York. Hal Ashby got the most from his acting company. They all look and act like real people with real lives, not stars. And Haskell Wexler's camera work is as artistically brushed as Woody's best known song:

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THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND words and music by Woody Guthrie

Chorus: This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway I saw above me an endless skyway I saw below me a golden valley This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts And all around me a voice was sounding This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling The fog was lifting a voice come chanting This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side .... it didn't say nothing! Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me

"Bound for Glory" is a dramatization of the early career of Woody Guthrie--particularly his wanderings around the country and the establishment of his career as a folk singer. However, the film does NOT cover his later years and his affliction with Huntington's.

Have you ever seen a movie that is well made and you are supposed to enjoy it but you didn't? That's my experience with "Bound for Glory". While I could see it was a fine film and David Carradine did a fine job, I found my attention wandering throughout. Part of it is because the film is VERY deliberately paced (i.e., slow). Part of it is because I just don't happen to care much about the subject matter. This is sad, I know, as I am a retired history teacher and I should love seeing the dust bowl and the history of Woody Guthrie but I still didn't. Part of it is because Guthrie was a pretty selfish guy (leaving his family and just going on the road for months or years at a time with little regard for them). Regardless, I just didn't enjoy the experience. Well done but I had a devil of a time with "Bound for Glory"... But, I am NOT saying it's a bad film or that you shouldn't see it--it's just that I was not bowled over by it like nearly all the other reviewers.

An unusual film, it starts by depicting the harsh life that many had to live during the Depression era, but then about halfway through it takes a sharp turn to become a biography of a musician. This change is rather jarring, as it comes unexpected. It manages to paint the glumness and the poverty of the Depression era so well that the sudden change in story direction just about violates what has gone before. In fairness, it does give us an idea of what the protagonist went through and what motivated his career, but is there not too much time spent on it? There is relatively little in the way of story until the music side enters in. It is quite meandering, and full of characters that have no importance later on, there is cause to wonder whether it could have been compressed down. For the adventure genre that the film best fits into, it is also relatively unexciting. The film is rather awkwardly put together, and it could do with a few events removed, but there are still a lot of good points to it. The cinematography won the film an Academy Award, as did the adapted music soundtrack, and both these elements are good. Haskell Wexler has chosen some interesting angles to shoot the film from, and the songs are fitted into the material quite well. Overall it is a good film, but a difficult one too. It takes patience to get through, but there are some good things in the end.

Of all the five best picture nominees of 1976, "Bound for Glory" is the most difficult for most to remember. I mean it was the quiet film in a year which consisted of "Rocky", "Network", "All the President's Men" and "Taxi Driver". Woody Guthrie (David Carradine of "Kung Fu" fame) is suffering through the Dust Bowl of Pampa, Texas in 1936. There are no jobs, no crops and really no hope. Guthrie decides that the best way for him to do his part is to become a folk singer for the poorest peoples of Northern Texas and depression-era Oklahoma. What follows is a genuinely wonderful story which is all based upon the life of America's greatest folk singer. "Bound for Glory" is well-written, well-directed by the wonderful Hal Ashby and well-acted by David Carradine in the role of a lifetime. Melinda Dillon, Randy Quaid and Ronny Cox are among the other players, but this is Carradine's show from the word go. A wonderful, but truthfully somewhat forgotten masterpiece from the 1970s. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Rabble-rousing kid from 1930s Oklahoma heads west with his guitar for a better life, using the hardships of the roadside vagrants and field-pickers for his musical material. Talented Hal Ashby directed this Depression-era dramatization of folk singer Woodrow "Woody" Guthrie from a screenplay by the estimable Robert Getchell (adapting Guthrie's autobiography). However, Ashby allows the narrative to drift and ramble; while some may feel this approach appropriate, the lackadaisical overall feel--coupled with David Carradine's somewhat lachrymose lead performance--fails to lend the film the big emotional heart one longs for it to have. There are certainly compensations, particularly Haskell Wexler's cinematography and Leonard Rosenman's music-adaptation, both of which won Oscars. Guthrie's romantic life plays out like a series of rerun episodes (which each of his women seen smiling from the bedroom), yet there's a great deal of beauty in Ashby's presentation and several witty passages in Getchell's script. **1/2 from ****

At its base, Bound for Glory is just a simple biopic about Woody Guthrie. In execution, it turns out to be a lot more. We actually learn very little about Woody Guthrie's life. I don't know the exact statistic, but I would guess that it covers no more than a few years, with an end title that tells us briefly of his death. And basically all of the experiences shown onscreen can be seen in other films, most notably John Ford's brilliant American masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath. To be absolutely fair, the scenes of migrant workers' woes are at least equal to those in its predecessor. A good one-line summary of Bound for Glory might read "a modernist equivalent of The Grapes of Wrath told from the point of view of folk singer Woody Guthrie." But Bound for Glory has a few things that make it stand out from other films, that make it as memorable as The Grapes of Wrath.

First and maybe foremost, you have the brilliant and gorgeous cinematography of the great Haskell Wexler. I'm no expert on cinematographers, but Wexler is one of only three I can name offhand (the other two being, if you are interested, Vittorio de Sica and Sven Nykvist). I love Wexler's work in films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Matewan (a thematically similar film directed by the great John Sayles). But what Bound for Glory most resembles is Wexler's very controversial cinematography on Days of Heaven. Not controversial because of anything specifically photographed, of course, but, if you know the story, a different cinematographer took credit as lead DP, leaving Wexler with a credit that was something along the lines of "with additional photography by". Wexler claims to have photographed more than 50% of the scenes in the finished film. He has sat through the film several times, I have heard, with a stopwatch. Bound for Glory, at any rate, is one of the most beautiful films you're ever likely to see. It's golden colors are beautiful, and the camera is moved gently, but with precision. This film actually has the first shot that used a steadicam, although I had forgotten to keep an eye out for it when the film was playing (I was far too engrossed). My favorite scene is one where Guthrie and a black hobo have left the boxcar of a train and move to the top of it. There they sit and converse as the most beautiful landscapes in our country pass by behind them. These are some of the best shots I've ever seen. And just because of those shots, even if the film didn't contain a plethora of other relevant materials, I would call this film one of the best ever made about the United States.

Secondly and thirdly, this film is about Woody Guthrie, one of the greatest American artists of the past century. David Carradine, who, in other performances, has never convinced me that he was as good as his father, John (who was in Grapes of Wrath, incidentally), or his brother, Keith, breaks apart my former opinion of him and delivers a masterful performance. I don't know whether I could identify why he is so good in this film. It's as if he has an aura about him. He really does, however, seem to enbody Guthrie's convictions. Throughout the film, Guthrie's music is played, whether sung or as an extra-diagetic score. This is great American music. So much of it has become part of the soundtrack to the American life. I mean, I remember learning songs like "This Land is Your Land" and "This Train" in elementary school music class. In his day, Guthrie had difficulty in getting those kind of songs out to the public. His bosses were constantly ordering him to tone down the political edge of his music. Luckily for America, he steadfastly refused to do so. Woody Guthrie was a true American hero. Bound for Glory depicts that as much as he could have hoped for.

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.

BOUND FOR GLORY compassionately portrays that Woody Guthrie's gift to mankind was about being at life's mercy, deliberately staying on a par with everyday people -- not just understanding and speaking for them, but being them and speaking for himself.

BOUND FOR GLORY had the courage to abstain from the bigger-than-life formula for Hollywood success, and never hurried its pace to placate a predictably impatient audience. The scenes, and David Carradine morphing into Woody Guthrie, took whatever time was needed to ripen into the enriching story of inherent human value, undeniable personal dignity, and the insidious soul-starving quality of greed that this masterpiece movie tells.

Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, Randy Quaid, and David Carradine all delivered academy award worthy performances. No saints, no heroes, no cavalry to the rescue; just actors tenderly disappearing into heart capturing characters who are disturbingly vulnerable, familiar, ordinary, and profound.

I think that Woody Guthrie came along at the right time for his music to be played and become popular. The 30s, the years of the Depression of economic want and deprivation, Guthrie was a voice for the homeless and dispossessed, for those just wanting a small slice of the American dream. Guthrie would not go over in the Reagan years and surely not in the age of Trump.

One really should see Bound For Glory back to back with A Face In The Crowd. The real Woody Guthrie is not all that far apart from the fictional Lonesome Rhodes whom Andy Griffith played in that latter picture. Both represent differing strains of American populism just that Griffith's character Lonesome Rhodes represents the dark side. And we've recently seen the dark side triumph.

Guthrie didn't want people to just feel good, he wanted for them to be healthy and happy and prosperous. It's not enough as I think people who voted for Donald Trump in the last election will find out soon to deprive those 'others' whomever they be of what you think they're stealing from you. Subsisting isn't living. Enough to pay your rent or buy home, see your kids get educated with the hope they'll do even better than you, that's what it's about. And you get it by organizing. Putting the sweat of the working man on an equal footing with the buying power of the bosses. An ethic that's being challenged now.

David Carradine plays the rambling and rebellious Guthrie who got the cook's helper's tour of America via the freight trains and the migrant labor camps. It would have been the easiest thing for Guthrie to just pack it in and just become a hillbilly entertainer on country music stations. He was after far more than that with his songs. Carradine captures Guthrie's rebellious spirit perfectly and gets great support from Melinda Dillon as his loving wife who is also concerned the next meal for their growing family.

Bound For Glory got an Oscar for Best Adapted Musical score and when you have Woody Guthrie's voluminous writings to work with it must have been a labor of love. It was up for Best Picture and a flock technical awards as well.

Woody Guthrie's most famous song was This Land Is Your Land and listen to the words carefully. It's not just patriotic pablum the benefits and responsibilities of this land called America is for all of us to take care of and leave in good condition for the next generation.

After all this land was made for you, me, all of us.

One can go into this film from several different angles, and be rewarded at every turn. You like history? Bound For Glory's depiction of Depression Era life is both accurate and eye-opening. You like music? The perspective gained on one of our nation's greatest songwriters is delightful in a way every man can appreciate. You like against-the-odds stories of rugged individualism? Hope you're hungry. The pace may be criticized as slow, but works in emphasizing the dreariness and despair needed to understand the motivations and emotions that lead to Woody Guthrie's greatness. The deliberate storytelling also reminds one of the manner in which Kurosawa might weave a fable. Which reminds me, David Carradine's performance is inspired. Great film any way you look at it.

Enjoyed this film from beginning to the very end because it was so down to earth and told a great story about Woody Guthrie played by David Carradine. Woody Guthrie left his Texas home and headed for California and along the way he experienced riding the railroad in a box car and even on top of them from town to town and was beaten up by the railroad workers. Woody meets up with some very poor people who were trying to make a living by picking crops in the fields for penny's a day and children deprived of food and shelter. Ronny Cox,(Ozark Bule) meets up the Woody and they play music for a radio station and at the same time try to get a union established for the working people on the farms. David Carradine did a great job of acting and this is a very outstanding picture to view more than once. Enjoy

Found the movie to be "real". Did a great job of showing how things were at the time. Carradine & Cox did an outstanding job. Really enjoyed the music. Feel that this movie has certainly been overlooked during the years. A real QUALITY film.

This biopic starts in 1936. Woody Guthrie (David Carradine) is struggling in the dusty small town of Pampa, Texas with his wife Mary (Melinda Dillon). Jobs are hard to find and everybody is looking to leave for California. He runs off to ride the rails and becomes one of the most influential folk singers.

This is limited in excitement and tension. It's a quiet easy movie. It's quietness takes away some of the emotions in the movie. David Carradine is putting in a simple nice guy performance. There are some inventive camera work using the new steadycam. The look of the movie is one of faded dusty postcard. It's a pretty and interesting movie to look but it's not much more than that. It's a long winding road.

This is a frustratingly uninvolving Woody Guthrie biopic. I felt that I learned more about Woody the person from the Billy Bragg/Wilco album "Mermaid Avenue" than this fragmented and dull film. The movie is nice to look at (probably the sole reason for its existence) and gives us one of the more realistic portrayals of depression-era life, but tells us nothing new or particularly revealing about Woody Guthrie: all it offers is "he was just a regular guy" revelations about his adultery. Hal Ashby's film is an empty and enervated postcard.

Is there any other musical figure in history who can be called as heroic as Woody Guthrie? The man was a musical genius, a visionary songwriter, and a great man, a man who never gave up on his dream, a man who gave up a lot of money so he could take his songs to the people, the people the songs were written by, and for, in the first place. Woody Guthrie was integrity personified, a great American hero. "Bound for Glory" is quite appropriately one of the greatest American films of all time, as well as one of the most criminally overlooked, despite two Academy Awards for cinematography and score, and four more nominations including 'Best Picture' (losing in that category to "Rocky").

Astonishingly accomplished cinematography from legend Haskell Wexler as well as some great editing and a stunning score in addition to Hal Ashby's (Harold and Maude) excellent direction make this a beautiful, haunting, and brilliant film. The performances carry the film, with David Carradine turning in what is surely his greatest ever performance, a stunning, passionate, beautiful portrayal of Guthrie which fully captures the man's spirit. Ronny Cox and Melinda Dillon are also superb in their roles. Ashby gets a sort of realism from his actors that is sorely missed today, and any other method of portrayal would make this film far less captivating and beautiful than it is. Screenwriter Robert Getchell adapts his script very well from Guthrie's autobiography, choosing the correct parts to tell. In many senses this feels less like a biopic and more like a story about working class America. Maybe that's why this is probably the greatest biopic of all time.

In terms of technical accomplishment, this is easily among the top 100 films of all time. It's a great American film about a great American hero. It tells the story of not only Guthrie, but also those who surrounded him and the people he sung to. It's a beautiful, emotional, and arresting film that is surely essential viewing. One of the most criminally overlooked films of all time.

A resounding 10/10

First hour is quite good as the firm of Getchell, Wexler, Ashby and Carradine (respectively the screenwriter, DP, director and star of this movie) plunge the viewer into small town, Dust Bowl Texas with its twin miseries of poverty and boredom and then bring the viewer along with Woody as he hits the roads and rails of Depression Era America with their miseries of poverty and violence. Once we hit LA, though, and Woody starts to rise in fame and fortune, the movie's energy begins to flag as does its interest as the film makers appear to flail in their attempts to make us care about Woody's unhappy marriage or an affair he's having with a rich gal or his arguments with the producer of his radio show over standards and practices. And the film doesn't end so much as wind down with Woody rather undramatically deciding to go to NYC and Greenwich Village adoration, if not glory.

Consistently good, however, is David Carradine's performance which is definitely on the grainy, not especially likable side, as befits a guy who blithely abandons his wife and kids twice.

Give it a generous B minus for the first hour.

PS...Did you notice that Melinda Dillon played both Guthrie's wife and Memphis Sue, his go along to get along musical partner? First time I have ever seen an actor play a major and unrelated minor role in the same film. Very strange. Kinda like seeing Anthony Perkins play both Norman Bates and the John Gavin boyfriend of Janet Leigh role in "Psycho". Why did Ashby do it? Just for fun? Doesn't seem likely. Ashby is not a "just for fun" type director. Budget problems? More likely. If anyone knows could they please tell me? Can't find an answer on El Google.

In one of his many masterpieces throughout the '70s, Hal Ashby tells the story of Woody Guthrie (David Carradine) during the folk singer's Depression-era travels, and how he got politicized. We see the plight of working families moving to California, and everything such. One of the best scenes is when a rich family picks up Woody. While they talk about their wealth and stuff, Woody says something that I'm probably not allowed to write here.

All in all, this is a magnificent look into one man's life, and into history in general. If only one thing's for certain, it's that Woody Guthrie will remain an important part of Americana. A great movie. Also starring Ronny Cox and Melinda Dillon.

This portrait of Woody Guthrie has a lot of highlights, including Haskell Wexler's great photography).

But David Carradine is very good, not great in the lead, and the film feels a bit unfocused.

There's surprisingly little of Guthrie's music performed, and a lot of it played orchestrally as soundtrack, which seemed odd and out of character to me.

I appreciate that this is grittier, darker, and less linear than the standard Hollywood bio-pic. And I love that Guthrie is shown as a deeply flawed man, (e.g. his easy willingness to cheat on his wife). But in the end this doesn't go very deeply into his politics or his music, the two most important things about his life.

After all these years, finally got around to watching it. Lovely to see Carradine as a young guy, having seen him in Kill Bill I/II. Haven't seen _Kung Fu_ (yet).

I was struck by the great, great script. The writing makes the characters both human and mythic, at every level, from storyline motivation to the poetry of utterance under the sway of passions, both conventional and visionary.

The film put me under its spell of biographical story arc, and held me. That's rare and beautiful.

The only production false notes were fleeting instances of the fight choreography failing to convince. Besides that, writing to direction to acting feels "of-a-piece" and seamless. Add to this the set work and costuming and you are absolutely immersed in a great story.

One other disappointment: According to an IMDb "goofs" note, it seems the screenwriter pulled a punch re Guthrie's relationship with the station manager over content: In reality, the rift was apparently not over support for the migrant workers, but over support for the nascent "workers' paradise" in the Soviet Union. I think they should've hewed to history on that one. Maybe it would've put some folks off, but it would also have given the lefties something to really chew on, vs. this sterilized portrait. I'm left-leaning myself, and love the tempering that bits of real history like this impart. The screenwriter/producers should have "nutted up" and eaten this one.

Anyway, check it out.

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?

This was one of the first biographies of a music star. Woody Guthrie was also the most famous communist in American history. This made just doing the movie an act of extreme courage on the part of everybody involved.

The movie is as much about the depression in the 1930's as it is about Guthrie. Evoking the atmosphere of the 1930's Midwestern United States is what the movie does best. "Bonnie and Clyde" is really the only other movie that succeeds as well as this one.

When I saw it thirty-two years ago, I thought it was beautiful, but politically tepid, downplaying much of the politics of Guthrie and the period. It seemed to also show Guthrie as inarticulate, rash, self-destructive, egocentric and foolish.

Looking at it now, the cinematography is not great, some of it is quite grainy. It is fine, but not brilliant.

More importantly, I appreciate now that it does not romanticize Guthrie. No doubt in the coming century, he will become an icon like Che Guevara. One gets a vision of a real flawed and down-to-earth person and not a white-washed myth in Carradine's brooding portrayal. It hurts the drama, but that is something I think Guthrie would have appreciated.

Some have noted that David Carradine never did anything better. This is true. Still, he has worked steadily as an actor, now with over 200 movie and television roles. He is in no less than ten movies this year. If you include over 120 episodes of his two Kung Fu television series, he has been in as many productions as his legendary father, John Carradine (339). It is ironic that his father was best known for his role in "Grapes of Wrath" and he will be best known for his role in "Bound for Glory,"

Altogether this is a beautiful, laid-back, easy-going version of the Woody Guthrie story. One expects that soon, in the future, a much more passionate version will appear.

Hal Ashby had a brief run of brilliance in the 1970s, directing one eccentric gem after another. But his streak was somewhat interrupted by this pedestrian biopic of singer Woody Guthrie.

I'm probably not the best person to review a movie like this, because I find it hard to be impartial when commenting on biopics. I generally don't like them, and don't really know why I keep watching them. They're almost always dull and safe, but every so often you come across a really good one, like "Coal Miner's Daughter," and feel hope renewed that others will be as good. "Bound for Glory" isn't bad by any means, but on the other hand it really isn't anything. It's quiet and slow and leisurely and makes you wonder why such a thin story really needed to be strung out over a nearly two and a half hour film. David Carradine is pretty good as Guthrie, who, true to biopic form, was kind of an ass to all the people who actually mattered in his life and a hero to the people -- in this case the poor of dustbowl America -- who felt represented by his art.

"Bound for Glory" won Haskell Wexler his second Oscar for cinematography, and indeed it is the film's meticulous recreation of Depression-era America that is its biggest asset. Leonard Rosenman also won an Oscar for adapting Guthrie's music to the screen. The film received four other Oscar nominations, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Film Editing. Ashby was that year's unlucky director, watching his film get nominated without scoring a nomination himself.

Grade: B-

Has the appearance of a movie made for TV. I don't know enough about Guthrie's dustbowl years to comment on authenticity, but the film does a good job of portraying what Guthrie stood for and the times and experiences that influenced his songwriting.

This Woody Guthrie biopic got deserved Oscars for cinematography and musical score but it doesn't have much more to recommend it. If you want to watch a story about Okies and migrant workers in the Depression, "The Grapes of Wrath" is vastly superior. While this is probably the best role that David Carradine ever had, I found his performance very frustrating. He was so laconic, laid back and minimalistic that he almost faded into the background. Film biographies are about bigger than life characters and that is not Woody Guthrie in this movie.

Honestly, I think the movie would've been better had Ronny Cox, who plays a supporting role in this film as another union-activist folk singer, had played Guthrie instead of Carradine.