'Best Actor' performance sets saw blades spinning

Crazy Heart

By Andy McKinney
Gazette/Connection Critic

Jeff Bridges is absolutely on target as the soulful failed country singer, the wonderfully named Bad Blake. I write this prior to the Oscars and confidently predict that the Academy will award him the statue for best actor. This is the work of a really fine actor who is now at the top of his craft. Kudos to Mr. Bridges.

We meet Bad Blake when he is “57 years old and broke.” He isn’t broke, or sick due to changes in the public’s fickle tastes or some unfortunate turn of events. He is broke because he is in the process of destroying himself. We find later that he is a clinical alcoholic and suffers from the early stages of emphysema. He drinks and smokes incessantly. He is, without putting to fine a point on it, a disgusting drunk whose groupies are sometimes even older than he is. Then he meets Maggie Gyllenhall and everything changes, eventually.

Don’t think that this is a romantic comedy. It is a tragedy with more than enough grit, honor and courage to avoid the dangers of cinematic bathos.

Gyllenhall is lovely. She is so much so that it stretches the elastic bonds of credulity when the she falls for the much older and obviously broken, aptly named, Bad. The romance between the two ill matched protagonists is the only slightly off note in the film. Two actors stand out for their supporting performances, Colin Farrel and Robert Duvall. Duval is Bad Blake’s friend and bartender; Farrel plays Bad’s former back up guitar player who is now on the top of the country music world. It adds a lot to a film for me when the supporting players are world-class thespians rather than anonymous journeymen actors.

Director Scott Cooper, most famous for his Civil War epic “Gods and Generals,” keeps his presence in the background and lets the actors carry the story, which Mr. Bridges does in spades. Cooper adds no flash to the effort and none is needed.

The “R” rated film (language, adult situations) fills an hour and 51 minutes of screen time and the viewer regrets not one of them. The tiny $7 million budget shows what can be done if you use talent instead of money to make a movie. It has grossed $26 million at the ticket booth thus far, and surely will make a lot more after the Ocsars. The producers, which include Duvall and Bridges, should be rubbing their hands with glee.

I strongly recommend this film for grown ups, particular those of us old enough to have a certain perspective on life. I say four rapidly spinning saw blades for “Crazy Heart.”

Watch for Mr. Bridges to appear in “True Grit.” A remake of the John Wayne classic film is now in the early stages of production, and should hit theaters in about a year. I expect Jeff Bridges to be every bit as good there as he is in “Crazy Heart.”