Lorey Sebastian
Jeff Bridges makes one of his strongest performances as a has-been country singer in "Crazy Heart."
Early in "Crazy Heart," a faded, alcoholic, four-times-married country singer-songwriter with a Kristofferson beard and a Waylon outlaw attitude rushes from the stage of the bowling-alley bar where he's been performing his half-forgotten hits for a small crowd of aging enthusiasts.
Leaning over a large metal trash can, he throws up, and his sunglasses fall from his head into the spew. He casually reaches into the barrel and retrieves the glasses, as if he's done this a thousand times.
Lorey Sebastian
Jeff Bridges makes one of his strongest performances as a has-been country singer in "Crazy Heart."
Bad Blake is a broken-down, hard-living country music singer who's had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too ...
Rating: R for language and brief sexuality
Length: 111 minutes
Released: December 16, 2009 Limited
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Beth Grant
Director: Scott Cooper
Writer: Scott Cooper, Thomas Cobb
When the action cuts to the next morning, the man is slipping out of a motel room where he's apparently had sex with a fan played by character actress Beth Grant -- a revelation intended to be more comically disturbing than the puke incident. (You may recognize Grant from her role as the chattering old woman in the back seat in "No Country for Old Men.")
The country singer calls himself Bad Blake, and he's played by Jeff Bridges, who brings all his four decades of deceptively casual charm and shaggy, unpretentious smarts to what is proving to be a signature role.
So far, Bridges has won just about every major pre-Oscar Best Actor honor available for this performance, and he seems a shoo-in for the Academy Award. Bad Blake might be to Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn was to John Wayne; if this isn't the actor's most inventive performance, it's certainly a memorable showcase for his talents. (Interestingly, Bridges is slated to play Rooster in the Coen Brothers' "True Grit" remake.)
Adapted by debuting director Scott Cooper from a novel by Thomas Cobb, "Crazy Heart" is something of an anomaly on the current movie landscape: a relaxed, 1970s-style character study more interested in observing behavior than in surprising viewers with the "twists" of a story. It may remind film buffs of "Payday" (1973) with Rip Torn and "Tender Mercies" (1983) with Robert Duvall, previous films about reckless country singers. To make the connection explicit, a grizzled Duvall shows up in "Crazy Heart" as Bad Blake's bartender best friend.
The film introduces Blake -- nicknamed "The Wrangler of Love" -- as a broke and broken-down 57-year-old chain-smoker with a genius knack for the classic country song. Sample lyrics: "I used to be somebody, now I am somebody else"; and, "Funny how fallin' feels like flyin' for a little while."
Most of the film's original songs were written by T Bone Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton, but Blake, of course, gives a different answer when's he's interviewed by an Oklahoma freelance journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who seems interested in more than his music. "Where did all those songs come from?" she asks. Answers Blake: "Life, unfortunately."
Blake is somewhat resentful that his former sideman, Tommy Sweet (played by an unbilled Colin Farrell, in a bit of stunt casting that doesn't quite work), has become a state-of-the- Nashville-art country-rock superstar while Blake travels from bowling alley to dive bar in "Bessie," his beloved '78 Suburban. But the movie, to its credit, portrays Tommy as a sincere artist who wants to help introduce his former mentor to a larger audience, despite Blake's resistance.
Inevitably, Blake and the much younger journalist begin a perhaps unwise romance (Blake's impressed when the woman name-drops Lefty Frizzell). Gyllenhaal can be an annoying screen presence (she brought nothing to "The Dark Knight"), but "Crazy Heart" makes perfect use of her dreamy, vulnerable manner.
The couple's relationship is just one of several parallels between this movie and "The Wrestler" with Mickey Rourke. Both stories chronicle the sad lives of a postfame, past-his-prime, substance-abusing entertainer who falls for an attractive woman with a kid while being rejected by his own estranged offspring and coping with a threatening medical condition. The difference is that "Crazy Heart" -- as one might expect from the title -- is more forgiving and more generous to its characters.
"Crazy Heart" is playing exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.
-- John Beifuss: 529-2394
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