Last Saturday, I watched Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall and directed by Scott Cooper and I found it to be absolutely fantastic.
Jeff Bridges was nominated and did win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in this movie and it was completely well-deserved. He turned in an unbelievable performance as Bad Blake, a down and out country singer who seems perpetually drunk, perpetually jaded and perpetually hard-assed.
But despite all that, you can see him as a real person. If you didn't know Jeff Bridges and if you didn't know that this was a movie, you would think that you would be watching a brief snippet of the life of some real country singer. Jeff Bridges was that good. He makes people forget that he is an actor playing a role. He becomes his role and owns it completely.
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall were also great as the girl Bad Blake falls in love with on his one-man tour and as the best friend that stays with him throughout all his ups and downs. Colin Farrell was less so because... well he's Colin Farrell, playing a country music star, words that don't seem to fit well in a sentence at all. But it was refreshing to see the protege not stabbing his mentor in the back like in every other movie. Tommy Sweet, Farrell's character, seemed genuinely grateful for the start that Bad Blake gave him years before.
There are a lot of things that are unsaid and unseen in this movie, but they aren't really necessary. We can somehow see it in the way that Bad Blake moves, the way he talks and acts. The history is in the atmosphere of the film, and even without it being explicit, there is a kind of understanding that takes place between the viewer and the film. At least for me, there was.
That being said, Crazy Heart is a movie that is propped up by the strength of its actors, or in this case, actor. And while that might be said of a lot of movies, this is one of those times where if you change the actor, the film just doesn't work.
So congratulations to Jeff Bridges, you deserve it, and then some. Fifth time's the charm right?
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