Bridges, Gyllenhaal connect

Rating: 9/10 (6 September 2010)

Crazy Heart, a sentimental look at an aging country singer just trying to git along, is richly rendered, immersing the viewer into a cigarette- smoke-laced, beer-soaked landscape of podunk bars and whiskey jars. Galvanized by an Oscar-winning performance by Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake, the world-weary crooner who's seen better days, the movie is a few notches above the standard rags-to-riches story (particularly because there are hardly any riches), with a finale that's both understandable and unpredictable. Jeff Bridges is a crusty, cranky old drunk here, sort of exactly like the broken-down piece of meat that Mickey Rourke was in The Wrestler. And like Randy the Ram, Bad Blake has a run-in with a younger woman; in this case, she's younger than Marisa Tomei was to Rourke. She's Jean Craddock, a local newspaper reporter, played by the always effervescent Maggie Gyllenhaal (who's terrific here). Like Tomei's character, Craddock has a kid and has weathered tough relationships. (It's set in the Southwest, where movie womenfolk seem to make multiple bad relationship decisions.) Jean falls for the oddly endearing Bad, and a long-distance relationship is born.
Bridges is one of those actors who seems just plain awesome in everything. I mean, the man's fun to watch, whether he's The Dude, The President, the bad guy in The Vanishing, a lounge singer, even a comic- book villain. His effortless charisma carries even the most lightweight of movies, and perhaps that's something that's worked against him over the course of his career. Crazy Heart was his fifth nomination and his first win, so it's not as if he's never been recognized, but because he's so good at disappearing into roles and because he takes the crap movies along with the meaty ones, maybe Hollywood's been taking him for granted. Oh, but not now. Bridges' Bad Blake is both unbelievably strong and weak, a man beholden to the bottle but desperate for love. Against his better instincts, honed over a very long middling career, he falls for Jean and her little boy in return.
The movie could have taken a few shortcuts and called it a day, and it didn't, and for that it deserves a lot of respect. Colin Farrell plays a singer who got his start from Blake years ago and is trying to repay the favor. A lesser movie might show Blake all bitter about the younger man's success, but it's not so here. A lesser movie might also show anger and resentment from ol' Bad Blake, just trying to keep on keepin' on, only to culminate in a not-at-all-shocking concert that somehow saves his career, but this one doesn't do that, either.
I think one of my favorite aspects, though, is how well the two leads played off each other. Maggie Gyllenhaal is 33 years old, and Bridges is 61, but you'd never know it watching the two of them together. Oh, sure, he does present as an older man, but not almost 30 years older. Their connection is palpably strong and a wonder to behold.
It also helps a lot that the songs – some performed by Bridges and Farrell themselves – are real toe-tappers, excellent – pardon the pun – stage setters. Whether Blake's playing in a bowling alley or before 12,000 fans as an opening act, he and his tunes are genuine country, solid American entertainment.
Blake, like Rourke's Ram, is not an entirely sympathetic man; he's not even a man who's made bad decisions in the past and suddenly begins to make good ones. He's a good man, yes, but trapped by a device of his own design. It's not even a certainty, over the course of the movie, whether he will come out on top in the end – or whether he deserves to. And that's a testament to both Bridges' tremendous, career-defining work and to a top-notch script by director Scott Cooper, who adapted Thomas Cobb's novel.