Jeff & Maggie - Crazy Good!

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2010)

There are so many things that should be - but aren't - wrong with this film it's hard to know where to start. Clichés? The broken down country/western singer. Who's a drunk. The chipper 20-something who falls for him. Who has an adorable 3-year old son. The hyperactive agent always screaming into the telephone. And the cigarettes, always the cigarettes, and the booze, always the booze.
And yet every one of them seems to unfold here for the first time. It's as though a magic cliché eraser has landed, and "Crazy Heart" alights from the projector as though you've never seen any of it before.
Jeff Bridges has been nominated for an Oscar four times before, this time he wins. Guarantee. It's not just a great acting performance, he *is* the performer on the downside of prime, singing for a pittance in bowling alley bars, shacking up with the Lulabelles who remember when he was famous, tossing down cheap scotch at every turn. This is not some tour-de-force "look at me" show, like Heath Ledger's masterful Joker, where you sit up and say "Wow! That's some acting!" This is one where you have to convince yourself that it's "acting" at all, it's so well done.
The only sad thing about this great performance is that it will overshadow that of Maggie Gyllenhaal, who seems perfectly miscast to have any interest at all in Bridges' "Bad Blake" character - and, needless to say, who does. She's wonderful, striking, convincing, in fact, but hidden in the mist of Bridges' great achievement. Smaller parts by Robert Duvall (who also Exec Produced) and Colin Firth keep the story alive and true as we follow "Bad" on his journey, stumbling down the path he has set for himself by his many bad choices, but with his undeniable talent.
Props to both Firth and Bridges, who sing all their own material, and to whoever decided to rescue this from the "straight to cable" graveyard after seeing the performances within. This is good stuff, great stuff, actually, and there's Oscar buzz about. Couldn't happen to a better bunch, and if every country/western song doesn't have a happy ending, it's nice that this one will, come ceremony time in March.