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People are voting emotionally.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"Bound for Glory" is a very long but utterly engrossing musical biography about an entertainer worth getting to know. That man is Woody Guthrie (David Carradine), a sign painter from Pampa, Texas during the Great Depression era. Determined to make some move away from his hardscrabble existence, and plagued by a case of wanderlust, he takes leave of his family and heads for California. This he did like so many other people of the period who believed that the West Coast held more promise. Inspired by a singer named Ozark Bule (Ronny Cox), he uses his musical talents to give voice to the scores of Americans who were struggling to get by.It's true that we don't learn a LOT about Guthrie in the course of this two and a half hour long film, but it's still easy to get involved in the story. (Which, other than a scant few people, consists mostly of fictional characters.) It can boast some truly stylish and thoughtful filmmaking, thanks to Oscar winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, screenwriter Robert Getchell (adapting Guthries' autobiography), and renowned director Hal Ashby. It does often look like a painting of this sad chapter in American history, come to life. But it goes far on the spirit of its main character. Carradine, giving the performance of his career, makes Guthrie a good, simple, pleasant person who, in the end, is true to himself. Although he is able to make a good living performing for the radio, he realizes that he has to sacrifice too much integrity in order to please greed-motivated sponsors. He tires of having to deal with people with their own agenda, and gets on the bad side of authority figures who dislike his open support of unions.Carradine is extremely well supported by a rich gallery of familiar faces, with meatier roles going to Cox, as the likeable Ozark, Melinda Dillon (who plays both the singer Memphis Sue and Guthries' wife Mary), Gail Strickland (as a rich society type who helps to run a soup kitchen), John Lehne, as the disapproving radio boss, Ji-Tu Cumbuka as an upbeat hobo, and Randy Quaid as the frustrated migrant worker Johnson. There's several other people you'll also recognize: David Clennon, Mary Kay Place, M. Emmet Walsh, Brion James, James Hong, Robert Ginty, and Bernie Kopell in an uncredited cameo as Baker the agent.The soundtrack is, of course, wonderful, with a superb assortment of Guthrie tunes; film composer Leonard Rosenman also won an Oscar for adapting Guthries' music into film score.Ultimately, this is an uplifting story; it may have some down sides along the way, but it endears itself to us the way that it portrays this entertainer who truly wanted to represent the American people.Eight out of 10.

A film that depicts a Man and His Time with remarkable dust filled clarity. There is much emphasis on the plight of the poor and the Crusade that Woody Guthrie embraced and brought to America through songs with an unfiltered reality like Life Magazine did through pictures. It has a brought to life performance from David Carradine and the whole cast is in great support. The Award Winning Cinematography is excellent ditto the soundtrack but the Woody songs sung adequately by the Star are far less than the crackling creations of the real Guthrie and are only passable and infrequent. The film is compelling and evenly and effectively paced that exemplifies the extraordinary stifling situations that are depressing the people during the depression. But there is also some hope burning beneath the Western sun and most of it comes from the Western soul of a bona fide benefactor of the working poor and a breathless voice who sang anthems with songs like...there are no liars on THIS TRAIN...and...THIS LAND was made for you and me.There was no lie in this man...Woody Guthrie. The movie does him proud.

Bound for Glory (1976) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Excellent biography of Woody Guthrie (David Carradine) who leaves his Oklahoma home when he sees no future there and travels to California where he sees nothing but poor workers being mistreated and underpaid. Guthrie finally picks up a guitar and begins to write songs about what he's seeing in hopes that it can change how things are. Hal Ashby's BOUND FOR GLORY is a very slow-paced film that really doesn't appear to be about anything. As with most of Ashby's films, this one here takes its time getting told and if you barely looked at it you'd think that there wasn't anything going on and that there wasn't any life to the film. The movie takes about ten minutes for the viewer really to settle in and from here on it's quite a powerful movie with a classic performance by Carradine, some terrific movie and some truly wonderful images. The cinematography by Haskell Wexler is among some of the best that you're ever going to see and it perfectly blends with Ashby's masterful direction, which really puts you in the time and place that all of this takes place. The beautiful images of Guthrie riding on the top of trains or the work camps where violence often erupts if "union" is mentioned is perfectly brought to life and you really can't help but feel as if you're watching an actual documentary from the 1930s about the Depression, the Dusk Bowl and this small man who would rise up to do great things. Carradine certainly deserved all the praise he got for his performance because there's not a single moment where you're watching the movie and seeing an actor playing a part. Instead you see Guthrie right up there on the screen doing his thing. Many times actors can't separate themselves when they play a real person but Carradine is so into the character that you really can't help but be amazed. Ronny Cox appears as Ozark Bule, the man who brought Woody into the business and Randy Quaid also has a small role as a picker. As with most bio-pics, you really can't believe everything you're seeing as certain events are going to be changed for a wide range of reasons but that really shouldn't keep anyone from watching the picture. I know many can't stand the slowness that Ashby brought to his films but I think the slow pace actually helps the film because it just seems to fit the times and situations that were going on. At 147-minutes, the film is certainly entertaining from start to finish due to that beautiful cinematography and of course Carradine, the actor and singer.

This was one of the first biographies of a music star. Woody Guthrie was also the most famous communist in American history. This made just doing the movie an act of extreme courage on the part of everybody involved.The movie is as much about the depression in the 1930's as it is about Guthrie. Evoking the atmosphere of the 1930's Midwestern United States is what the movie does best. "Bonnie and Clyde" is really the only other movie that succeeds as well as this one.When I saw it thirty-two years ago, I thought it was beautiful, but politically tepid, downplaying much of the politics of Guthrie and the period. It seemed to also show Guthrie as inarticulate, rash, self-destructive, egocentric and foolish. Looking at it now, the cinematography is not great, some of it is quite grainy. It is fine, but not brilliant.More importantly, I appreciate now that it does not romanticize Guthrie. No doubt in the coming century, he will become an icon like Che Guevara. One gets a vision of a real flawed and down-to-earth person and not a white-washed myth in Carradine's brooding portrayal. It hurts the drama, but that is something I think Guthrie would have appreciated.Some have noted that David Carradine never did anything better. This is true. Still, he has worked steadily as an actor, now with over 200 movie and television roles. He is in no less than ten movies this year. If you include over 120 episodes of his two Kung Fu television series, he has been in as many productions as his legendary father, John Carradine (339). It is ironic that his father was best known for his role in "Grapes of Wrath" and he will be best known for his role in "Bound for Glory," Altogether this is a beautiful, laid-back, easy-going version of the Woody Guthrie story. One expects that soon, in the future, a much more passionate version will appear.