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Jeff Bridges and his Crazy Heart-Throb Maggie Gyllenhaal

Crazy Heart
Written and directed by Scott Cooper
Starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell
****

You can almost taste the cheap whiskey and smell the stale cigarettes of the bars and bowling alleys that Crazy Heart’s Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) has been reduced to playing at every night. Based on the novel by Thomas Cobb and helmed by first-time director Scott Cooper, the country-singer-on the-skids tale Crazy Heart has the look and feel of a country song come to life. 

The years have been hard to Bad Blake, and the one-night stands, the boozing, and the slow and steady slide into obscurity aren’t making things any easier. Sound familiar? He’s also got a son he’s never met. Sounding familiar now? What really makes Crazy Heart something to behold — thanks to pitch-perfect casting and a tightly-wound script adapted from Thomas Cobb’s novel — is that it starts at rock bottom, and you’re right alongside Bad for the journey up. The film itself is a story of redemption, and sweetly so.  Bad pours what little heart he has left into Jean (a fantastic Maggie Gyllenhaal), a small-town reporter and single mom who just can’t help but become wrapped up in Bad’s gruff-but-sweet sensibility.  For Bad, the lonesome crawls along the highways from show to show become a little less lonesome, and maybe he’s steering more toward some kind of salvation than an empty horizon. The old songs seem a little easier to sing — maybe the old guy is even having fun.

Still sound familiar?  It is.  And you’ll always know where it’s going. The real treat for the audience is watching Bridges, an actor who, all “Dudes” considered, is at his career-best (relax, I didn’t say better than The Big Lebowski). 

Truth is, Bridges imparts Bad with such superb subtlety and authenticity that you feel the heartache in the pluck of each string and in the croak of every note Bad ekes out.  Did I not mention the tunes?  Producers T-Bone Burnett (O Brother Where Art Thou) and Stephen Bruton outdo themselves with “The Weary Kind,” a sour and soulful ballad Bad pens for rising country star and Bad’s prodigy Tommy Sweet (a confidently cool Colin Farrell). 

And on top of Colin Farrell, there’s Robert Duvall in an essential role as Bad’s best bud, and what you have is a sweet and deeply affecting story chock full of actors at the top of their game. Not so average after all, huh?