Film Review: Crazy Heart

Being quite a big Jeff Bridges fan, it took me ages to finally get round to watch this, the film he finally won a Best Actor Oscar for. I wasn't avoiding it or anything like that, but it just sometimes takes me a while. These kind of reviews always give me a bit of trouble - a film wins awards and gets widespread praise, and if I agree with it...what else can I add? That's the reason you won't see reviews for films like Reservoir Dogs or Apocalypse Now on this blog, there's nothing more to be said, you don't need this writer telling you how amazing they are.

But I digress, and move to the subject in hand. Crazy Heart tells the story of faded country singer Bad Blake (Bridges), who scoring several hits is now relegated to playing bars and bowling alleys (one of the first shots of the film is of Bridges at a bar with a bowling alley behind him, The Big Lebowski fans will approve) while the singer he taught everything he knows, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell, who I had no idea was in this film), sells out arenas around the country.

Blake meets journalist Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) on the road, and romance blossoms, but Blake drinks too much and smokes too much and health problems, as well as uncertain future, are both on the horizon.

To get the negative out of the way first, I found Crazy Heart to be a pretty unoriginal film. The whole 'ageing singer still on the road' thing has been done before, most recently for me in Clint Eastwood vehicle 'Honkytonk Man', although that was a period piece and was more about the relationship between an uncle and his nephew, but the similarities remained for me.

But any case of 'seen it all before' is overshadowed by Jeff Bridges superb performance. Everything you read was true, this was an absolute blinder, and just nailed pretty much every emotion you could feel about a character. If you don't emphasize with this character you are either not watching the film, or some kind of emotionless husk of a human being.

There's strong support from Gyllenhaal also, and the small roles from Farrell and Robert Duvall, as Blake's best friend are also spot on. And even more kudos to Farrell and Bridges for doing all the singing themselves, they could pass for country stars any day!

Crazy Heart is still an entertaining, albeit predictable watch, worth catching for no other reason than Jeff Bridges stealing the show.

***1/2

A well deserved Oscar for Jeff Bridges, it's a shame that the story is so well trodden. Great performances all round save the day though.