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Blaze: Flashes of Brilliance

Blaze: Flashes of Brilliance

Last updated on: September 27, 2026 at 9:18 am by Chase Padusniak

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Blaze: Flashes of Brilliance 2026-09-27T09:18:12-04:00 Chase Padusniak

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Director and co-writer Ethan Hawke in 2018, when the film was released
Source: Wikimedia (Montclair Film)
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In a slight violation of my plan to write about internet movies—a sin for which I hope I may be forgiven—I’d like to take on a musical biopic. Currently, Criterion hosts a bevy of rock biopics, perhaps in celebration of their renewed popularity these days. Among these stands Blaze (2018), an Ethan Hawke picture about outlaw musician Blaze Foley.

The problem is that I love Blaze Foley’s music, and I find his life endlessly fascinating. Raised by a fiery Pentecostal mother, stricken with a limp by polio, kindhearted, hard drinking, and known for a torrid love affair in an isolated treehouse, Foley defies easy description. His admirers and friends include Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams, and John Prine. Foley’s lyrics are always simple, often Biblical, and infused with effortless poetry. The movie has no way of containing these multitudes.

It tries—perhaps tries a little too hard. Hawke, who co-wrote the script with Sybil Rosen (Foley’s wife), attempts to get around the complexity of Foley’s life by telling it out of order. We dart back and forth between his final show, a radio interview with his collaborators, and various moments in his life, mostly those involving Sybil. The trouble is that such small, out of context snippets require the dialogue to bear the weight of the entire film’s purpose. Blaze can never just be a musician hard at work; he has to have something to say. Each line must reveal who he is deep down, must instruct the audience in the meaning of his life.

For example, in one scene Blaze and Sybil sit in the back of a pick-up truck chatting. She asks him if he wants to be a star. He responds that stars burn out. He wants to be a legend, because legends never die. Now, I’m no stranger to melodrama. I love the stuff. But could this corniness be any further from Blaze Foley’s life? Even if he said those words, should they summarize the film? Imagine every scene plays out in that way—short, each line of dialogue a prophecy super-charged with meaning. It’s overwhelming and boring all at once.

There are other issues too: the yellowness of the color grading gives the film what I can only call Sundance anti-sheen. It all gets very boring to look at, no matter how many beautiful shots Hawke composes (and he’s got a few up his sleeve). Foley’s music often just hums along in the background, rarely the star. But I love his songs. The world deserves to hear them. Ben Dickey, who plays Foley, does a solid job looking and sounding like him—why not feature his deep vocals? Instead, they play softly behind more dull melodrama.

I was astonished to see how positively audiences seem to have received the movie. My only guess is that if you have no existing familiarity with Blaze Foley’s life and music, that the general contours on display here work well enough as an overlong prestige drama. But if you love the man, his mission, and his music, this just seems both pretentious and sloppy. A missed opportunity.

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