Review of “Crazy Heart”
Like the country music that runs through its blood, actor-turned-first-time-director Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart is awash with clichés. Every day is a new town and another show for country music legend Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges). He never met a glass of whisky he didn’t like, and with every glass, that faded San Antonio Rose sitting in the front row of his show looks better and better. He’s a mean of son of a gun who ran out on his wife and son twenty years earlier and has been running ever since. In fact, short of his dog dying, his life pretty much is a country song.
Blake’s career has seen better days - he’s playing a bowling alley when we first meet him but his luck takes a turn for the better in Santa Fe when he meets journalist and single mum Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal). She might be the one chance to turn his life around, or perhaps that shot will come from his former protégé turned country music superstar Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell). The story (from Thomas Cobb’s novel) might be clichéd and simple, but what isn’t is Jeff Bridges’ raw, honest performance as Bad Blake. Blake is a bloated, broken man. He can’t remember how many times he’s been married, and while he says there is no reason to write new material when his old stuff is so good, the truth is that he has nothing inside him left to give. Bridges is at his best, well matched by some very big names playing in the film’s smaller roles – Maggie Gyllenhaal is typically superb, Robert Duvall does nicely as Blake’s one and only friend, Colin Farrell (uncredited and superbly understated) is the thorn in Blake’s side.
Barry Markowitz’s camerawork at times captures the hazy heat of the American southwest, giving it a sepia-toned warmth, while this grainy wash gives Blake’s late-night bender scenes a green-about-the-gills feel. Cooper’s direction is assured, though Oscar nominations aside, this is really just a small, low-budget film that just lucked on some big talent. Meanwhile, the film is all about the music. The great T-Bone Burnett served as one of the film’s many producers (including Duvall and Bridges), and Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton co-wrote all the songs, ably performed by Bridges and Farrell. I’m not a big fan of country music, but some of the numbers had me positively aching for a gingham shirt, bolo tie and snakeskin boots.
CK
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