Director Ethan Hawke does the memory of Blues singer/songwriter Blaze Foley justice in this transfixing biopic. The life of a troubadour is always a difficult one. Blaze Foley was up to the challenge.

| Original Score: FIVE STARS | Sep 2, 2024

Blaze is a very unique story and experience and proves that Ethan Hawke doesn’t just have to act in order to impress audiences.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 4, 2024

Blaze is wonderfully rich, heartbreakingly real, and told with overwhelming intimacy. Ben Dickey’s portrayal of Blaze Foley is a sight to behold. Go and seek out this film!

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 16, 2022

There's a great movie in here, but Hawke hasn't quite found it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2020

Even if you have no knowledge of Foley or interest in country music, Blaze will burrow deep into your heart and mind, and linger there like a catchy song.

| Jun 23, 2020

More than a biography about a cursed aura composer and performer, Blaze is a love song to the country & western. [Full Review in Spanish]

| May 26, 2019

What is surprising - and exciting - is the sensitivity with which Hawke has approached this difficult character. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 23, 2019

Hawke pieces together an impressive and thought-provoking tribute with a Texas-sized heart and the kind of performances that awards are made for. Even when you know what's coming, Blaze haunts you like a classic country song.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 30, 2019

It's a lengthy, inebriating, and casually funny experience that didn't fall into the usual traps of biographical films.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 7, 2019

An affectionate, honest portrait that interrogates our need to deify dead icons, while carving out a space in music history long left vacant for Foley to fill.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 6, 2019

Dickey looks like a big, shaggy dog with a wounded paw who's been left out in the rain overnight. And he's a real revelation.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 26, 2018

A songwriter making his major acting debut, Dickey captures the burly, vulnerable quality of Foley's lyrics and vocal delivery, creating a palpable sense that the songs were excavated from the darkest corners of his soul.

| Dec 26, 2018

Even as a viewer not knowing much about Foley, watching Dickey makes one feel that you are watching the actual man -- he's that natural in the role.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 26, 2018

A quietly mournful and gently celebratory look at a boisterous, but underrated personality, Ethan Hawke's biopic Blaze is a humane approach to creating iconography organically and empathetically.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Dec 17, 2018

Beautifully shot, this low-key life story feels at times like you're flipping through an old album, crammed with artfully arranged memories and aphorisms.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 14, 2018

Hawke is more fascinated with passion than profile. And here, that's more than enough.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 14, 2018

Blaze might be telling a story we've seen before, but it does so from an angle that offers a few surprises.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 12, 2018

People who knew him said he gave off so much menace, he scared bikers. This is a film about a big drunk lovable, doomed song-writing Teddy bear who happens to be named Blaze Foley.

| Original Score: C-plus | Dec 11, 2018

Blaze's methods are more poetic than proclamatory, focused primarily on transforming the raw facts of Blaze Foley's life into an elliptical and heartsick dive bar epic.

| Original Score: B | Dec 7, 2018

If you love music, this flick is for you. Armed with Dickey's larger than life turn as Blaze Foley, Hawke makes this a fascinating character study.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 12, 2018