JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

gavin6942 In 1930s southern United States, a widow (Sally Field) and her family try to run their cotton farm with the help of a disparate group of friends.Rotten Tomatoes says, "Places in the Heart is a quiet character piece with grand ambitions that it more than fulfills, thanks to absorbing work from writer-director Robert Benton and a tremendous cast." I disagree. While the cast is incredible, and even includes a young Terry O'Quinn, the film as a whole just did not impress me.Robert Benton is a fine director, although maybe not a well-known one. He excelled with "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) and made a decent thriller with "Twilight" (1998). But this particular film was not one that I felt was that great. Maybe I just was not moved by Depression-era cotton farming and race relations in Texas...

classicalsteve At the risk of sounding like I'm giving too much away, there's a strange bookend at the end. The film begins and ends in a typical south-mid-west Protestant church in America. Two characters who were killed at the beginning and appear again as the final two figures seen. If you haven't seen the film yet, you won't expect where they show up, and hopefully I won't be accused of offering a "spoiler". Endless speculation and debate about their reappearance has been written about ad infinitum, even by reviewers during the time of the film's initial release in the mid-1980's.The first scene is a Protestant church in rural America where "Rock of Ages" (not the Def Leppard version) is a mainstay of the musical repertoire. Edna Spalding (Sally Field in an Academy-Award winning performance) is the wife and mother in a family of four in the rural south in Texas in the midst of the Depression. She is married to the unquestioned man-of-the-house, Royce Spalding, the sheriff of this small town. As the film progresses, we learn his role in the family was far more than simply the "bread-winner". In addition to providing a good income, he took care of all bills, the finances, the mortgage on their house, even discipline.However, we don't learn about his role as head of the household by seeing him pay the mortgage and the bills, etc. At the very beginning of the story, Royce is killed at the hands of a young black man, Wylie, who was playing with a gun while drunk, a deadly combination. We get the sense Wylie had no intention of killing the white sheriff, but, as it was in those days, the accidental shooting signed the epitaph of Wylie as well. The two bodies are brought to their respective families and friends, with a brief appearance of the lynched Wylie being dragged behind a truck passed the house of the Spalding residence. This act will change the course of the Spalding family.After the social gathering mourning the deceased at the Spalding residence has ended, and the fried chicken and coffee cake have been consumed, Edna is dealt a curve ball care of the local bank via their powerless lackey, Mr. Denby (Lane Smith). After stating his willingness to help Edna in anyway, Mr. Denby tells her the bank would prefer if she sold their home and property in order to pay off the loan for the house. Inappropriately, he makes other suggestions about how to temporarily break up her family since they will be effectively homeless. (It is a snapshot into why life insurance became popular in the wake of the Depression.) She declines his suggestions and offers different ideas about how to create income for her family, but Denby rejects all of them, as if a woman was incapable of doing such things. His only concern is about the bank receiving its payment.However, Edna resolves to make a go of trying to create income for her family. She solicits the help of Moze (Danny Glover in an Academy-Award caliber performance), a middle-age black man who offered his help earlier in exchange for room and board. They decide to plant cotton in the nearly 40 acres of land owned by the Spaldings. Shortly thereafter, Mr Denby returns to the Spalding residence, and being the good Christian that he is, offers an arrangement which will make the bank happier about her keeping the property. He proposes to have his brother-in-law, Will (John Malkovich), a blind man injured in the Great War and currently unwanted by his family, to rent a room at the Spalding household as way to generate income. At first Edna declines the offer until she realizes she's not in a situation to refuse income, and so Will moves in, called Mr. Will by the kids and Moze.The five members, Edna, Moze, Mr. Will and the children become a new family from the ashes of the old. During the story, Edna learns to do all the things her husband used to do, such as creating income and signing checks, even disciplining the children with corporal punishment. At first, Mr. Will despises his circumstances, but gradually comes to care for and even love the children and Edna and even Moze. When a tornado descends upon the town, the family becomes unified in a way they hadn't expected. And towards the end, Mr. Will defends Moze, and this rings of some of the themes present in "To Kill a Mockingbird", both the book and film.There is one side story which distracts from the main storyline: Wayne, the husband of Edna's sister Margaret is having an affair with the local schoolteacher, Viola. Several scenes involve these other four characters interacting with one another. Unfortunately, these scenes were not as interesting as Edna et al, and it diminishes their storyline which is really the main focus of the film. As much as I like the talent of Ed Harris, Lindsay Crouse, and Amy Madigan I would have preferred their sequences cut with more screen time offered for the developing relationships between Edna, Moze, Mr. Will and the kids.Still, a fine film with incredible acting work. This may be the best acting of the three leads, plus honorable mention of the two young actors, Yankton Hatten and Gennie James as the kids Frank and Possum. Field certainly is as compelling as ever, but the other leads Glover and Malkovich not only keep up with her stride-for-stride, but make the story compelling from start to finish. And the two small roles of the sheriff and Wylie reappear at the very end, as if to remind us what led to the paths taken by the main characters.

sankey48 We have enjoyed this movie a couple of times. My father in law has always maintained you don't need to watch a movie more than once. I say bunkum to that. As a projectionist for one of our Universities in Sydney, Australia, back in the mid to late seventies - I always learned something or saw something I had not noticed before as I ran many movies over and over. Each time seeing something I missed before. Places in The Heart is one such movie. So many of the reviewers have widely covered the many aspects of Places. Each review I have read (and as at 26th October, 2012, I have read them all) - in a lot of cases bring up another aspect not covered before by others. I just wanted to maybe round them all up and add a comment on my part as well. I agree with one reviewer that kind of alluded to how close Sally Field's role in "Places" reflected her LIVE struggle for recognition on the screen. I also agree with some reviewers note of the out right hypocrisy being portrayed by all these "nice" people in the daytime to be members of the hateful, violent "Klan" at night.I loved the young man who portrayed Frank and what a good son being willing to take his "licking" as he would have done when his dad was to punish him. I would like to look for more roles the young actor plays. The one who played Possum was good also. Regarding the insertion of the "extra-marital" goings on..i wonder if this was done to reach a bigger audience with a more Mature kind of Rating..PG here in Australia. But as another reviewer stated 'it might have given the audience more time to finish their pop corn and soda.' Hmm. I am glad someone brought up the answer another looked for about the passage of Scripture towards the end. I will add it at the end of this Review. I must say I thought, as a musician that likes bright, rousing hymn singing - the hymns were more like a dirge...harmonious but SO slllllow it's a wonder people didn't go to sleep. These days I am familiar with most American rendition of hymns being the opposite in always done very fast and breath-takingly. I enjoyed all the actors in the movie Sally Field, Danny Glover, John Malkovich being one of his earlier movies on reflection as I have seen him much later in Man In The Iron Mask and most recently in "Empire of the Sun" I thoroughly recommend the movie to everyone. The passage of Scripture to be preached in the last scene -one of the reviewers was asking about follows. It is from the King James Version of the Bible.1 Corinthians 13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.1 Corinthians 13:2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.1 Corinthians 13:3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing.1 Corinthians 13:4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envies not; charity vaunts not itself, is not puffed up,1 Corinthians 13:5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil;1 Corinthians 13:6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;1 Corinthians 13:7 Beareth all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.1 Corinthians 13:8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. What an appropriate scripture for this type of movie and all it portrays.

runamokprods I was sad to find I didn't love this as much as I had remembered from its release nearly 30 years ago. The acting is terrific, and the film looks great. But the main plot has elements of familiar melodramatic clichés that bugged me more now in a way they didn't in 1984. The race to save the farm, and the 'we'll do it despite the odds!' dialogue felt a little too Hollywood this time around, as did the 'perfect' gallery of downtrodden, oppressed outsiders (the single mother, the African-American, the blind man). At the same time, the subplot of the romantic triangle between Ed Harris, Lindsay Crouse and Amy Madigan, while wonderfully acted, really seemed to have very little at all to do with the rest of the film. That said, all the acting (Sally Field, Danny Glover, John Malcovich) is terrific, and the details of time and place are rich and vivid is slightly (intentionally) softened by the haze of the passing years (Benton grew up in the town where the story takes place). And that wonderful long last shot, which gives the whole film a larger context, is still a powerful and brave way to end a story.