Familiar Story, Strong Central Performance, Unconvincing Ending

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2014)

CRAZY HEART tells a familiar tale of a washed-up country music singer Otis (aka Bad) Blake (Jeff Bridges), who spends much of his time touring seedy venues in New Mexico and Texas, singing his old songs and drinking himself to distraction. He takes up with journalist Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), but this relationship comes to grief when Bad inadvertently loses her four-year-old son Buddy (Jack Nation) in a crowded shopping mall. Bad ends up sharing a bill with his one-time protegé Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell); while resenting the latter's success, Bad eventually comes to realize that Tommy will provide him with the only means of financial salvation. If Bad writes new songs, Tommy will sing them and pay handsomely. Jeff Bridges gives a bravura performance in the central role - at once aggressive, vulnerable, pig- headed, lonely yet self-willed, he comes across as someone in perpetual need of human company, yet reluctant to reveal anything about himself to others. It is as if he cannot bear to face the truth about his washed- up show-business career, or his descent into alcoholism. The photography by Barry Markowitz is breathtaking, especially his ability to show the insignificance of human beings - and their actions - when set against the rolling landscape. Tommy might be able to play in front of 12,000 people, but he can never achieve immortality. The only criticism that might be leveled at Scott Cooper's film is the ending, which shows Bad making rather too speedy a recovery, while making some unconvincing suggestions about Jean's life once she has split up with Bad. Would someone with such a professed reputation for finding the wrong man be so happily married now? Bad's recovery from alcoholism seems equally forced; for someone with such a long relationship with the bottle, it seems inconceivable that he should be cured after just one course of treatment. Nonetheless CRAZY HEART is well worth watching, if only for Bridges' performance.