Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Powerful

hyped garbage

Fresh and Exciting

Sally Field is at her best here. 1984 was her year. 5 years earlier she did "Norma Rae" that won her an Oscar. And she does it again in "Places in the Heart". Set in 1935 Texas. The Great Depression was in affect. Field plays Edna Spalding, a housewife who ends up being a widow when her husband is accidentally shot and killed by a young drunk African American. He in return is dragged and later hanged. After the bank tells her that money is scarce, she is forced to sell her property. A drifter name Moses (Danny Glover) wanted to help Edna with the cotton fields. She declined the offer, but gives him a meal. Since both are in desperation, he steals the silver spoons, and she gives Moses the offer. Experienced in cotton picking, Moses explain on how it works. Though the bank was a bit unwilling with Edna's persistent nature, he enlisted his blind brother-in-law, Will (John Malkovich) to help the widow and Moses. Obstacles came out to hinder things: The storm. And the KKK after the first sale of cotton. Edna was grateful for Moses for his help, and he took it well with pride. Pride can get in the way of life, when someone offer you a hand, Take it. This movie is a winner. No doubt about that. Sally Field did very well, for the second time. This movie is a gem. A must see. 5 stars.

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...

There's a super sweetness to "Places in the Heart," but it wears it well. The characters all have little failings, but nothing that can't be quickly overcome in the space of a tender, touching moment. Though many scenes walk right up to the line, they stop short of turning that well-earned tenderness into cloying sentimentality.The young, cherub-cheeked widow played by Sally Field is can-do-ism personified, and is perhaps more racially tolerant than the norm for 1930s Texas, especially considering that her husband has just been killed by a drunk, black youth. But the movie sells us on the idea that she has bigger problems to worry about than racial politics or even personal loss. The Depression is palpable throughout the movie, and it reshapes her life almost overnight. A neighbor is living in a car, paint on a nearby abandoned house says "Gone to California," and now, with the death of the family breadwinner, Field's character also appears to be headed for bust. Worse, she may lose custody of her two children. With no time to mourn, she has to take in a surly boarder (John Malkovich, thoroughly believable as the blind WWI veteran) and hire a black man who previously stole from her (Danny Glover) in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. If it seems all too predictable that her headstrong determination and positive spirit will prevail, that her worldly-wise black field hand will prove his worth, and that the bottled-up boarder will grudgingly reveal his sensitive side, well... it wears it well. Perhaps these characters should be thought of in the way that many of us like to think of our grandparents and great-grandparents: a little idealized in our minds, perhaps, but people who we believe were fundamentally good and who lived through difficult and transformative years in our history as soldiers, laborers, school children, and housewives. The final scene in the movie is a creative tracking shot that emphasizes the oneness of this diverse, often fragmented and antagonistic, yet familiar community that we have come to know. It is not just a Texas community, but an American one.It is hard to say what a slow-boiling side plot about marital infidelity, featuring a young and inscrutable Ed Harris, adds to the movie. There may be some thematic connection to a frightening sequence of a literally home-wrecking tornado. Or maybe it is a way to provide additional color by making the supporting characters flawed and allowing the main ones to remain only nominally imperfect. In any case, this B-plot is not very creatively rendered, and it takes time away from the Malkovich and Glover characters whose private lives would surely be far more interesting but are too seldom seen. This shortcoming, though, does not prevent the main plot from being as affirming and moving as it strives to be.

A solid dust bowl soap opera that stars Sally Field as a weary widow struggling single-handedly to keep her cotton farm running.Director Robert Benton's ("Kramer vs. Kramer") strengths are his ability to get great performances out of his actors; stylistically, there's nothing distinguished about his films. The same is true here. He's assembled a good cast, and he stands back and just lets them act. The movie is a like a checklist of every bad thing that could possibly happen to people living on a cotton farm in the 1930s, so we get a big tornado that wipes out the town and a special appearance by the Ku Klux Klan. It's probably authentic but it's also rather grueling. The movie is anchored by Field's fierce performance, and it's her that keeps the potential runaway melodrama in check.The fine cast of at the time mostly unknowns includes John Malkovich as a blind drifter; Danny Glover as a slave; Lindsay Crouse and Ed Harris as Field's sister and brother-in-law. I should hate the sentimental ending, but instead I'll be damned if it doesn't work.Grade: B+