A Crazy good chance at an Oscar
Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell shine as country music entertainers
By Erik Hayden 02/04/2010
Crazy Heart
Directed by Scott Cooper
Starring: Jeff Bridges,
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall
Rated R for language
and brief sexuality
112 min.
There’s nothing better for an aging, name-brand male actor than taking a turn in a comeback story, especially if it’s in the indie feel-good movie of the year.
Last year, that Oscar-worthy honor (tragically, he lost to Sean Penn) went to Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. As the beat-up, broken down former wrestling champ, Rourke head-butted and grappled his way to one last night in the spotlight, a (mock) bout where he could go out with Rocky-like bravado. It was a film that not only revived Rourke’s career (hello, Iron Man 2) but won back the countless fans he deserted during his drug-addled years.
Jeff Bridges, on the other hand, has never needed a comeback story. The distinguished Santa Barbara resident has been far too shrewd with his career moves to ever be hemmed into a make-or-break film. (This is a guy who has Tron Legacy and a Coen brothers remake of John Wayne’s True Grit on the horizon — he’s doing just fine.)
Still, in Crazy Heart, Bridges gets the role he’s been needing for the last decade. Crusty, crude and charismatic, Bad Blake is everything that you’d expect from a Johnny Cash-lite country singer of yesteryear. He guzzles bourbon like it’s water. He smokes a pack of cigarettes in what seems like an hour. He drives a venerable, dusty Chevy pickup truck and wears fading blue denim with worn-in leather cowboy boots. He writes aching, almost bluesy tunes (expertly performed by Bridges) that have nothing in common with today’s prefabricated “pop-country” fluff. Bad Blake is all that — and Bridges plays him so well that he avoids becoming a big music cliché.
Unlike Rourke’s wrestler, Bridge’s Bad Blake isn’t completely over the hill. He may be 57 years old with a heart condition from all the drinking, smoking and decades of cooking his trademark greasy biscuits — but he isn’t pathetic, yet. He resides in a comfortable, modest home in Houston, still has his old manager who books him on regional tours and has a friend in the young, Keith Urban-like music star named Tommy Sweet (a surprisingly well-cast Colin Farrell). The relationship is one of the film’s freshest ideas.
At first glance, you’d expect the Tommy Sweet character to be a despicable foil that either steals songs from good ol’ Bad Blake or otherwise mocks his very existence. But he’s not your cookie-cutter music star, and despite the familiar feel, this is not your typical music film. Deftly played by Farrell, Sweet is not only sympathetic to Bridges, he’s downright reverential. He books Bad Blake as his opener at the mega-venues he routinely plays, commissions the aging musician to write songs for him (at more than $20,000 a pop), performs duets with him and otherwise looks upon Blake as a mentor and trailblazer — or at least a beloved uncle.
Blake ambles through his tours with nothing more than his good nature and a never-ending supply of alcohol. At one of his stops, he’s interviewed by a divorced local reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who sees through him and — somewhat implausibly — falls almost immediately for the old singer. While the script forces a brief love affair onto the pair, Gyllenhaal handles it with grace, maturity and nuance. By the film’s end, there’s genuine affection and warm respect displayed between the two stars. More importantly, it doesn’t bog down the rest of the movie.
If you want to see the likely 2010 Oscar winner for Best Actor, be sure to catch this Jeff Bridges flick before it slips out of theaters. You won’t be disappointed.
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