A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The first must-see film of the year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Blaze is a based on the memoir Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry by Blaze Starr and Huey Perry.The the film stars Paul Newman as Earl Long and Lolita Davidovich as Blaze Starr.It was written and directed by Ron Shelton.The film is a comic-strip re-telling of the curious late-1950s relationship between famed striptease artist Blaze Starr and Lousiana governor Earl Long. Their romance is counterbalanced with the story of Long's efforts to win voting rights for Louisiana's black citizens. The governor's political enemies ruin his chances at re-election, then try to put him out of the way permanently with a trumped-up insanity charge. But with faithful Blaze at his side, Long confounds his foes by winning a congressional seat. On the eve of this triumph, Earl Long dies, bringing this boisterous story to a sobering conclusion.This is noted mostly for the offbeat casting of Paul Newman.He was at his best here.His performance elevates the film into higher levels.Watch it for him alone.

I'm happy the film Blaze came out if for no other reason than Earl Long finally got his place in film history beside his more famous brother Huey. Earl spent a lot more years in public office and maybe no man ever enjoyed just campaigning for office and the trappings thereof when elected.I was a mere lad, but I do remember Earl's tumultuous and final term as Governor of Louisiana. The stuff you see here about Earl Long, the relationship with stripper Blaze Starr and the rest, was big news back in the day. One of the reasons that Earl could not do what George C. Wallace did was that Wallace had a most compliant first wife in Lurleen Wallace. One character we do not see here was his wife and later widow Blanche. Long was very much married at the time all of his antics were front page news, it was Blanche in fact who had him shipped to the funny farm.Just as Blanche Long is eliminated from this story so is United States Senator Russell B. Long, son of Huey. Russell Long, who was barely the minimal 30 years old, was appointed by his uncle who happened to be Governor at the time to the U.S. Senate following the death of John H. Overton was still in the Senate when Uncle Earl's antics was big and embarrassing news. Russell Long served in the Senate for over 40 years and unlike his father and uncle became a most powerful Senator through his patient rise up the seniority ladder.Even without Blanche and Russell, Earl Long's affair with Blaze Starr is the basis of a fine motion picture. Lolita Davidovitch is a warm and earthy Blaze Starr, a Loretta Lynn/Patsy Cline type from West Virginia without their talent. Still she might not have sung, but the woman had one fine figure. And when she pointed those glockenspiels of mass destruction at Earl Long, he was cooked. Imagine watermelon as an aphrodisiac?Paul Newman does very well indeed as the irascible old governor just hanging on despite physical and mental problems. Today Earl Long might have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease or as some have speculated with bi-polar disorder. He might have been given the proper medication.If Blaze has a fault and it's a big one, it's the lack of secondary character development. We don't really get to know about any of the other people in the Earl and Blaze story. But we do get to know Earl and Blaze. And if Earl K. Long was indeed bi-polar and been given the proper medication, we might have never have had this story or this film.

Movies based on real-life stories and characters are known for being dependent on using certain comedic and dramatic devices to "keep the audience enthused," but this film felt so artificial that I had a hard time maintaining the thought that this was based on a true story. I wasn't given too much insight into these characters (all one- or two-dimensional), and it basically plays out like a farce that takes a serious turn in the last 45 minutes or so. The character arc or Blaze Starr is developed way too swiftly. In the first 10 minutes, she's this nice little small town gal who lives a healthy Christian life and has a passion for folk music. She gets on stage once, at first (very briefly) getting offended by the booing soldiers who want her to "take it off," and suddenly in that one little striptease she feels liberated? By the 10-minute mark, she's already this sultry, vanity-stricken stripper who gallops at any chance to show off her body to libidinous males. Hell, Elizabeth Berkeley had a more extensive character arc in "Showgirls." I can fathom the change in Blaze Starr's character. I just wanna know the steps in how those changes occurred, because I'm pretty damn sure they didn't occur so swiftly. I've seen several movies with Lolita Davidovich, and she's not a bad actress. She never blew me away with any particular performance, but I never had any negative criticisms about her. Well, this was Davidovich's first movie and...it pretty much shows. Though her character was written poorly, her cartoonish one-note performance doesn't help much. She never properly expresses the humanistic values of her character, and doesn't portray herself as much more than a dirty slut. Paul Newman's character of Earl Long wasn't written very well, and doesn't give the audience very much to sympathize with, but he plays it out the best he can. His energetic performance is about the only reason to check out this overlooked dud. But as I said, his character is written poorly and about all we learn about him is he's a dirty old man with psychological problems. The only good thing we learn about him is his persistence in awarding voting rights to African-Americans, and allowing them to be doctors. But I can see exactly why he was struggling to be re-elected as governor. I sure as hell wouldn't vote for him! That's not a good sign. Even when creating a character who's not perfectly sympathetic (which I have nothing wrong with) you must be able to express his/her good values effectively, even if it's done with subtlety. The country/western folk songs are a bit of a turn-off (at least to me), but I'm not gonna use that against the overall quality of the movie. After all, it is set in Louisiana. "Blaze" is not a terrible film, it's mildly entertaining, but I wanted to know a lot more about these 2 characters (even if the movie went on for 2 1/2 hours) and what resulted was no more than a throwaway comedy/drama. See it only for Newman's terrific performance.My score: 5 (out of 10)

1st watched 1/21/2002 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Ron Shelton): Confusing, comedy/drama about a true life relationsip between a Governor of Louisiana and a stripper named Blaze Starr. The confusion lies in what this movie wants to be. The intention of the Director seems to change almost from scene to scene. Is it a drama about Starr? Is it a comedy about the loud-mothed politician who fell in love with her? Is it a bitter-sweet Pretty Woman-like retread? Is it a true story played out to the best of everyone's ability despite the comedy-like events that took place? It's hard to tell even up to the very end what the goal was of the filmmakers in this one. Newman & Davidovich do ok jobs with their roles but the story and it's lack of a clear direction is what causes this movie's failure. We're also not really sure what the character's are really grabbing for with their exploits. A real dissapointment coming from the writer of "Bull Durham" and the Academy award winning actor Paul Newman. I guess everyone's got to make a loser every once in a while.