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Title: Crazy Heart
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is lots of foul language and some sexuality. Recommended for ages 17 and up. |
There is a quiet scene later on in the movie where a man sits in the room of his young girlfriend. He wrote a song that has been inspired by their relationship. She cries. Not because the song is extraordinary, but because she knows that writing songs is easy for him. This is a special moment for her, but he won’t remember it at all. He looks down sadly and says “I keep feeling the need to apologize for being less then you expected me to be.” This man is Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges in an Academy Award-winning performance). At one point he used to be one of the biggest country stars in the world. At the age of 60 though he’s broke, an alcoholic, and reduced to playing his songs in bars and bowling alleys.
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To add insult to injury one of his band mates, a young boy named Tommy (Colin Farrell), broke away from the band and has since taken the spot of biggest country singer in America. Down on his luck and disgraced, he finds some home in his life when an ambitious journalist named Grace (Maggie Gyllenhaal in an Academy Award-nominated performance). She’s half his age but they strike up a friendship that eventually becomes love. In a funny way, she is the only one that understands him. “Crazy Heart” was directed by newcomer Scott Cooper, which he adapted from a novel of the same name by Todd Cooper.
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Having not read the novel I can’t comment on it’s quality, but I find it would be difficult to read the novel without the music attached to the material. The songs, written by T-Bone Bennett, are almost crucial to why this movie works. At one point Grace asks Bad where the inspiration for his songs come from. His replay: “Life, sadly.” This seemingly throwaway comment comes back to haunt the audience. While Bad rarely speaks about his previous life, there are enough actions he does in real life for us to realize he tell his life story through his songs. When the final song comes around we are emotionally shaken because it now strikes us how painful his life has been up to this point, and the regrets he has.
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The cast also helps pull this movie above the ranks of mediocrity. Though fictional the story of a struggling musician is nothing new. But thanks to Bridges heartbreaking performance and poetic songs, the movie becomes much more involving then it otherwise would have been. Bridges has constantly been an underrated actor, but he and his Bad Blake character seem to have much more in common then anyone could have predicted. Having finally won an Oscar after being denied one four times, he is now set to headline the big budget sequel to “Tron” from Disney. Like his good friend Wayne (Robert Duvall) says: “It’s never too late son. Never too late.”
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