Crazy Heart

Crazy Heart is yet another biopic, not unlike Tender Mercies or The Honkytonk Man, about a down-on-his-luck, once famous country singer who gives it another shot, and works his way up from the bottom of the barrel to the top again. Am I giving something away? I don't think so. There's nothing wrong with the film, but you've seen it all before. I'll recommend it anyway, because Jeff Bridges is going to win the Academy Award for his performance, and he deserves it.

Bridges plays Bad Blake, an alcoholic, womanizing country singer, married five times, with a son he's never met, health issues, and no money to his name, despite a long list of number one hits, and a bevy of admirers. The film begins with Blake on one of his endless tours, getting drunk before, during, and after his performances in dive bars and bowling alleys, sleeping with whatever woman comes on to him, regardless of age, shape, or weight, and always trying to weasel free whiskey out of whomever he runs into. He's on the line with his manager, trying to get records deals, studio time, trying to get money out of him, but he knows he's past his prime and on his way out, and that the country music world has moved on to younger, wilder acts like those of his former back-up singer, Tommie Sweet (played by Colin Farrell), now a chart-topping Clint Black type.

On one of his stops in a podunk town, Blake meets Jean Craddock (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) a single mother moonlighting as her small town's newspaper reporter, and before you even got this far in the sentence, you knew what was going to happen next, and probably after that and after that. You probably know how the film ends (And you would be right and wrong, for the movie does contain a few surprises.). You could probably write a movie like this yourself. It's a cookie cutter formula. But these movies are not about the plot, they are about the singing, the songs, and the performances, and whether you believe Robert Duvall is up there singing, or Clint Eastwood is up there singing.

I believed Jeff Bridges was up there singing, but more than that, I believed he was Bad Blake, and that Bad Blake had written those songs based on the woes of his life, and I wanted him to write some new ones, and quit drinking, and win his woman back, and climb to the top again. Jeff Bridges made me believe him, and the songs made me believe him, and that, more than the familiar plot, makes Crazy Heart worth seeing.