Crazy Heart
Bad Blake has drunk too much, smoked too much, lived too long, and loved too little. At least, that’s the impression we get first seeing him in “Crazy Heart.”
Of course, that’s not his real name, but as played by Jeff Bridges, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was. Bridges knows this character intimately, in a bone-deep performance that is as entertaining as it is heartbreaking. Bad Blake is an old-school country artist who’s played the same songs for decades, and is playing bars and bowling alleys. Not exactly the glamour of celebrity, but it’s real.
Same goes for the movie. Yes, writer-director Scott Cooper’s adaptation of the novel by Thomas Cobb dips into formula, but with the performances by Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a Santa Fe writer who interviews Blake (and later falls for him) and the superb soundtrack by T Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton, you won’t care. It may not always be great art, but in the performances (including Colin Farrell as a grateful protege of Blake’s) and music (the Oscar nominated “The Weary Kind” is heartbreaking and deeply moving), you can witness something approaching it in this tale of redemption and clarity after a long road.
