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CRAZY HEART
(***)
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Movie Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
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Directed & Written by:
Scott Cooper |
Starring:
Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall |
Running time:
111 minutes
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Released:
12/16/10 |
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Rated R
for language and brief
sexuality. |
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"...an utterly familiar but mostly satisfying character study of a man
rescued from the brink of self-destruction..."
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Having gone through the drill himself a
quarter-century ago in “Tender Mercies”—and winning an Oscar for it—it’s perhaps
not surprising that Robert Duvall should have agreed not only to help produce
Scott Cooper’s picture about a dissolute country singer redeemed by his
affection for a woman and her young son, but to take a supporting role in it as
well. The movie is adapted from a novel by Thomas Cobb, but it—and the book, it
seems—certainly owe a debt to Horton Foote’s screenplay for “Mercies,”
acknowledged or not.
In “Crazy Heart,” though, it’s Jeff Bridges—freshly nominated for an Oscar
contender himself—who plays the singer, called Bad Blake; Duvall is featured as
his old buddy Wayne, who runs a bar in Houston, the place Bad calls home when
he’s not driving from one-night stand to one-night stand on the road. It’s while
on his latest tour of saloons and bowling alleys in New Mexico and Arizona that
the boozing, womanizing Bad meets Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aspiring
journalist who approaches him for an interview. Before long they’re romantically
involved, though the gruff charmer seems an unlikely choice for the wary younger
woman. Still, her cute-as-a-button four-year old son Buddy (Jack Nation) takes a
shine to him, and before long he’s trying to arrange stops at her place while
criss-crossing the desert highways to his gigs.
Bad’s connection with Jean and Buddy doesn’t end his self-destructive
alcoholism, but it does make him reconsider his past mistakes. He tries to
contact the son he’d abandoned a quarter-century earlier, and begins to smooth
things out with his former protégé Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), who’s now big
star on the circuit and not only arranges for Bad to open for him at a Phoenix
auditorium but offers to pay good money for new songs Blake might write. But a
car crash and a booze-driven mishap involving Buddy when Jean and the boy come
to visit him in Houston cast Bad’s hopeful future into doubt.
It’s nice that “Crazy Heart” doesn’t follow the simplest possible trajectory to
Bad’s redemption. Sweet, it turns out, is no villainous turncoat but a fellow
who genuinely wants to help his old mentor, and Tom Bower, as Blake’s agent, is
no heartless money-grubber but a fellow with affection for his client. The
attempt to reconnect with his son is no “Unsolved Mysteries” panacea. And while
Bad might wind up a man changed for the better, his final situation isn’t the
happily-ever-after one you might be led to expect.
Still, the general thrust of the script is awfully familiar, and it has to be
said that as is usual in such stories, it’s the ornery, disreputable guy at the
beginning of the narrative who’s more fun than the responsible soul at the close
(his scenes with young Nation in particular don’t avoid mawkishness)—a point
reinforced by Bridge’s wily performance. He rejoices in playing the grizzled
boozehound in the early reels, and is much less enjoyable to watch as the more
restrained fellow at the close, who even tells us he intends to jettison his
stage moniker and use his given name—Otis of all things—from now on.
Nonetheless Bridges’ is an authentic star turn—complete with convincingly
drunken renditions of Blake’s past hits—that captures perfectly the character’s
sad state, and it controls the tempo of the picture; Cooper’s direction follows
the disheveled, meandering, slow-paced aura that Bridges brings to Bad, allowing
the performance to blossom but also making for a picture whose deliberation
accentuates its predictability.
The rest of the cast mostly circulate around Bridges, but to good effect.
Gyllenhaal can go gooey a mite too easily, but she generally persuades you of
the possibility of so attractive a woman being attracted to such a troubled
charmer, and Farrell makes Sweet a more likable figure than he might have been
(he sings decently, too). As for Duvall, he could have played old codger Wayne
in his sleep, but as always he’s thoroughly engaging even in a stock role.
Technically, this is a no-frills production, but Barry Markowitz’s widescreen
camerawork uses the southwestern locations well, and captures the seediness of
the motel rooms where Bad stays and the lounges he plays. Special mention should
be made of the songs, newly-written but with the feel of the real thing.
“Crazy Heart” hardly fulfills the promise of the titular adjective—it’s
ruminative and moody rather than wild. But it’s an utterly familiar but mostly
satisfying character study of a man rescued from the brink of self-destruction,
attuned to the rhythm of an eye-catching star performance that must have had
Duvall wistfully remembering his own of a quarter-century ago. |
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CRAZY HEART ©
2010 Fox Searchlight Pictures
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2010 Alternate Reality, Inc.
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