At one point, early in the movie Crazy Heart, Bad Blake (played by Jeff Bridges) dedicates a song to a fan and his wife before lurching out back to throw up in a trash can, leaving his pick up band to cover the song. He fishes his sunglasses out of the puke, dusts them off, plunks them back on his head and returns to give the young lead guitarist, Tony (Ryan Bingham), his propers. This scene probably best sums up Bad Blake in all of his multifaceted glory. He is a man who finds no contradiction in bemoaning the fact that he now has to play with pick up band “Hippies” while he is bumming their pot. He is not an especially unique man, though he is closer to Walt Kowalski than to Randy Robinson, but he is a man whose story is well worth watching.
Jeff Bridges is rightly getting Oscar Buzz for this role. He plays Bad Blake as a onetime 70’s Outlaw, with the looks of Kris Kristofferson and stage panache reminiscent of Waylon Jennings. Here he is helped greatly by T-Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton’s soundtrack, which fits nicely with songs by Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt. When Blake shrugs off writing any new material, it calls to mind Willie Nelson’s line in “Reason’s To Quit,” “I need to be sober/I need to write some new songs that will rhyme.” However, the true centerpiece of the movie is the song “Fallin’ and Flying,” about falling, getting up and falling again. When Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) asks Blake what his favorite album is, he growls “Fallin’ and Flyin.” Bridges does a stellar job singing the song, if you remember that The Outlaws did not prize vocal perfection, punching the song with a faded bravado. When he belts out “its funny how fallin’ feels like flyin’…for a little while” you understand that Blake realizes he is long past that little while.
While Jeff Bridges owns the movie with a bamboozled blend of chaos and charisma that should lay the myth of Lebowski to rest for a while, he is joined by an equally good cast of characters. Maggie Gyllenhaal breathes far more life in Jean than the character would otherwise have. She manages to convey a romantic life of dating losers with a few looks and downcast glances, until the audience realizes that there is a redemption arc for Jean too—one in which she ends up dating a guy who has never let her down nor recovered from anything. Colin Farrell plays Tommy Sweet with the same kind of understated ease that he brings to all of his indie roles, though his singing voice is a pleasant surprise. Robert Duval shows up to play Robert Duvall in the guise of a world wise bartender who helps Bad Blake in his moment of need.
At this point it is almost cliché to point out that Crazy Heart is a cliché. But then again, there are only about 30 original stories and the rest is all window dressing. Crazy Heart dresses its windows with some heartfelt music and remarkable performances. There are moments when the film feels a little under baked. Parts of Tommy Sweet’s story and the redemption of Bad Blake could be more fully flushed out and realized, and, of course, Jean gets very little back-story at all. But those moments are not enough to distract from the very fine movie that is the whole.
Check out our review of the soundtrack to this film by clicking here.
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