Crazy Heart (2009)

What I Expected:

Over the years I have come to expect great things of Jeff Bridges. He is one of those actors, like Christopher Walken and Michael Caine, who is always working but typically doesn’t get credit for what he does. Unlike those other two though, he hardly ever shows up in heaping piles of poo, but rather in good, weird and interesting stuff. I went to this on blind faith that he and his agent knew what they were doing and that this would be one of those sleeper gems he is so known for.

What I got:

Last year Mickey Rourke BECAME Randy the Ram in The Wrestler and Sean Penn BECAME Harvey Milk in Milk. Both performances were outstanding and either would have been equally deserving of the Oscar (which went to Penn.) Both of these great actors transcended the material and truly became the character/person they portrayed. This year Crazy Heart is THAT movie and Bad Blake is THAT role for Jeff Bridges. If you want to see acting at its most sublime, this is it.

Bad Blake is a down-and-out, has-been country & western singer of the old school. He was one of the greats in his time, but he has long since crawled inside the bottle and now spends his time crisscrossing the Southwest in his old, beat-up Suburban playing dark bars and bowling alleys. Each gig is hundreds of miles from the next and he drives himself - usually drunk if he can afford it – all the while peeing in a jar to make better time. His life has been spiraling down for quite some time and you keep expecting him to crash spectacularly. The tension between how he hangs on to this life and what you know has to be coming is excruciating.

Bad doesn’t often sleep alone, but he has no emotional ties, not even to his son, who is now a grown man. When he meets Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) at one of his gigs it starts out pretty much the same, but they both realize they have something much more profound. She has a little boy, and Bad makes his first real connection with other humans in a long time with the two of them.

Needless to say, he is not ready for this and has to truly hit bottom before clawing his way back to finally being truly alive. In this he gets help from his local bartender friend played by Robert Duvall in what is a pretty neat homage to Duvall’s work in Tender Mercies.

All the songs are original to the movie, and Bridges does all his own singing as does Colin Farrell who plays Bad’s much more successful protégé. I am not much of a country fan, but they both do an outstanding job.

This little movie will keep getting bigger as the awards season goes on. I would not be surprised if this is the role that finally got Bridges the Oscar he so richly deserves.

Niels Hansen is the co-owner of Hansen Creative Services, a graphic design firm near Columbus, Ohio which specializes in employee communications and small business marketing.

3 Comments

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  By connie, February 10, 2010 @ 9:59 am

  Bad Brad abides.
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  By connie, February 10, 2010 @ 9:59 am

  Bad BLAKE, I mean.

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1. My very uninformed 2010 Oscars predictions | Reel Expectations — March 4, 2010 @ 7:22 pm

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