Blaze (2018)
★★★½ — Blaze (2018)
There's a particular kind of musician who seems to exist slightly outside of time, too raw for the mainstream, too real for the industry to know what to do with. Blaze Foley was one of those people. And Ethan Hawke's 2018 film about him feels exactly like that too: out of step with most biopics, moving at its own unhurried pace, more interested in mood than milestones. That's both its greatest quality and its most nagging limitation.
Ben Dickey, a musician himself rather than a seasoned actor, plays Foley with a kind of lived-in vulnerability that you simply can't fake. He doesn't perform Foley so much as inhabit him: gentle and chaotic in the same breath, generous to a fault, fiercely talented, and absolutely his own worst enemy. You believe every second of it. Alia Shawkat is equally good as Sybil Rosen, the woman who loved him during what might have been the most creatively fertile stretch of his life. Their romance, set largely in a cabin in the woods, has a warmth and an intimacy that anchors the whole film emotionally.
Hawke structures the story in a nonlinear, dreamlike way, looping back through time so that scenes feel less like plot points and more like half-remembered stories told over a late night. It's the right instinct for this subject. Foley's life wasn't a tidy narrative arc, and the film doesn't pretend otherwise. Scenes unfold slowly, deliberately, sometimes letting silence do the heavy lifting. There's real beauty in that approach, and it mirrors the ache in Foley's songs better than any conventional biopic chronology would.
And the music. God, the music. Hearing Foley's songs performed live in sparse rooms and smoky bars is genuinely moving. His lyrics cut straight to the bone, the kind of writing that makes you feel like someone's read your post at two in the morning. You understand immediately why songwriters of real stature revered him. If you've ever heard "If I Could Only Fly," you'll feel this film somewhere in your ribs.
But here's my frustration, and it's a genuine one. For all the atmosphere Hawke conjures, the film stays stubbornly on the surface of what made Foley extraordinary. It captures the myth well enough. The rambling genius, the self-destruction, the tragic obscurity. What it never quite manages is the mechanics: the why behind the brilliance, the creative process, the cultural soil he was growing in. It hints at his depth without ever really plunging into it. You come away moved, but not fully illuminated.
That's why, if you're serious about understanding Blaze Foley, I'd send you straight to Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah alongside this. The documentary does what the feature film can't quite bring itself to do: it gets under the skin of his talent, his context, his contradictions. The two work as a pair, the doc providing the bones, the film providing the feeling. Neither is fully complete without the other.
There's something to compare here with Amazing Grace, another film built almost entirely around live musical performance and the idea that watching someone sing is itself enough of a story. In that film it absolutely is. Here, I wanted just a little more.
Blaze is a beautiful elegy. A touching, atmospheric tribute that honours Foley's spirit and gives him the tender treatment he never really got while he was alive. But it sings around the edges of the song rather than striking its heart. It whispers when, just occasionally, it should howl. Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2026-01-17
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Philo · AMC+ Amazon Channel · Criterion Channel · Sundance Now
Rent: Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More music: Style Wars (1983) · 8 Mile (2002) · Chicken for Linda! (2023) · Tender Mercies (1983)
