The Wrestler meets 200 Days of Summer

Rating: 10/10 (20 February 2010)

Crazy Heart is the tale of Bad Blake, a washed-up country singer, who's life is transformed by the woman he falls in love with.
It's a simple story. We've heard it all before, and in theory, it has 'boring' written all over it. Well, it's true, there's not much action. And it's also true that at the half-way mark I was wondering what they were going to fill the next hour with. That turned out to be not very much, but it didn't really matter.
It takes a great actor to carry a film to the point where you don't really care what, if anything, happens, because you just want to hang out with him. Even if he all he does is sit down and drink beer, you'll still be watching. Jeff Bridges in the lead role of Bad Blake carries it off. You might remember him from 'The Big Lebrowski' (if you don't, you've missed another great film). More than ten years on, he hasn't lost his touch. Like Mickey Rourke in 'The Wrestler', he's on screen in almost every scene, and like Mickey Rourke, he's riveting.
Maggie Gyllenhaal (she was apparently in 'Away We Go' but I don't remember her), plays the love interest, Robert Duvall has a couple of great scenes and tasty Colin Farrell is thrown in for good measure.
The soundtrack is also worth a mention. As you might expect from a film about a country singer, it's country music all the way. But don't let that put you off. It's pretty darn good.
The 'The Wrestler' meets '200 Days of Summer' with a bit of' 'Leaving Las Vegas' thrown in. No guns, nobody gets shot, nobody dies, and I cried, just a bit, at the end. This is my kind of film.