Chris Smith I am older and Hank was gone by the time I was born. I warned there were spoilers, but anyone who knows anything about Hank, already knows about his drinking problems and the problems with his personal life. I gave the movie a 10 because I thought Tom Hiddleston did a fantastic job and had Hank's moves down pat. I thought his singing was great. I was very disappointed that I Saw the Light and I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry was not included in the soundtrack since Tom had especially done a great job with the latter. I thought Elizabeth did a great job as Audrey. I do realize there were issues with the screenplay, but I thought in general, it gave the viewers an idea of who Hank was. My in-laws saw him in person and I was introduced to his music when I moved here with my husband. It was quite a shock coming from New Orleans.

Oeuvre_Klika 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.

Lori Sloan I really wanted to like this movie... I wanted it to be a huge breakout solo hit for Tom Hiddleston, but it just wasn't that great. The writing seemed a bit cheesy and it took a while to get moving and that didn't happen until pretty far in, about the time his back problem was finally explained. From there on out, his drinking becomes obvious, but there is still too much left unmentioned about his marriage and what lead him to such destructive behavior. Hank Williams has been gone for a long time... I think we needed more of a reminder about who he was and what he went through. The music is great... there is talent in the film and you can tell that Tom Hiddleston put a lot of work into it, but it just doesn't come together. I guess in the end there was just too much left unexplained.

emuir-1 The only thing which made this dreary movie bearable was Tom Hiddleston's singing. Why a great classical actor such as Hiddleston (Henry V in The Hollow Crown) found himself in this yawnfest is beyond comprehension. Where they should have had an exciting montage showing Hank Williams going from smoky sweaty honky tonks in the South to Grand ol' Oprey and beyond, performing one song after another, we got a dull flat cheating husband soap opera played out in tacky motel rooms. Compared with the Johnny Cash biopic I Walk the Line, this was a waste of money and the waste of time spent watching it. The film had a budget TV movie feel with the major sets being outside the front door of William's home and a budget hotel room, which appeared to be the same one throughout. Even the scenes of meetings consisted of a man sitting behind a desk face by one or two others and little movement. The long farewell to his wife before he drove away to his unexpected death was excruciatingly corny.The lone star is Tom Hiddleston's singing, of which we heard far too little. I hope his career survives.