Crazy Heart don't reinvent the wheel in any ways. Jeff Bridges do the washed out country singer only a year after Mickey Rourke did his washed out The Wrestler, and before that we've seen other alcoholics or pill poppers or whatever. These are the stories always coming around, but as they are given new faces in life these are also the stories always true to human nature.
The quality differences in these movies are what makes or break them. They need good acting, a focused script, and a good understanding of how high their story need to go on the happy ending scale to work. There's really not much else to ask for. They'll never be original, but done with quality in their three main areas and some heart, and they'll be well worth the attention anyway. Crazy Heart sure is.
Bridges is brilliant in the lead as 'Bad Blake'. A 57 year old washed out drunk country and western singer playing in small establishments, while counting the dollars in his pockets to decide which brand of booze he can afford. He's credible in everything he does throughout the movie, and it wasn't a huge surprise he collected the 'Best Lead Actor' Oscar for his performance.
I've enjoyed Maggie Gyllenhaal's performances for quite a while, and she doesn't let me down here either. Her 'Jean' is an important support character to the story of 'Bad', and her performance is as usual with the right amounts of lovable, flawed, sexy, layered and credible. Also Colin Farrell comes along as the new generation country and western star 'Tommy Sweet', who started his career along and learned from 'Bad'. Along with performances from Robert Duvall, James Keane and a couple of others, they all make sure Crazy Heart nails the acting parts.
The script is focused. They know very well which story they are trying to tell, and they execute with militant precision. They are also well aware of how high they need to go on the happy ending chart. The music is very good. Not for nothing it was were this movie got its second Oscar.
Crazy Heart is actually pretty brilliant. There's not a lot of reasons to deduct points from the overall score. It's a story we've been told before, but as long as the world is filled with stories resembling these they also need to be written down and filmed. This is one of the better ones I've seen. In fact it's so good it's very close to an even better rating from me. I'm quite sure I got to get back to this one again to consider whether or not to actually award it a nine, but for now it's a rock solid country and western eight.
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