Crazy Heart

Review

Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart is a grand pedestal for Jeff Bridges as a bloated, washed-up boozehound country-and-western singer called �Bad� Blake. What makes the performance such a beauty is the contrast between Bad when he’s onstage and off. In his cups, he staggers around seedy venues, top-heavy and reeling; but when he slings his guitar around his neck, he leans back so that its weight literally centers him. His music centers him, too. He sings like he’s making his last stand against the universe. Bad’s songs, written by T-Bone Burnett, have an authentic drive: They’re all that’s left of his life. At least they’re all that’s left until he meets a journalist and single mom played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who he thinks could be wife No. 5. Why she thinks the same for even a millisecond is one of the movie’s more movie-ish conceits, but Gyllenhaal has such a delectable spaciness that you almost believe she sees something we don’t. The movie turns out to be another ode to the healing powers of AA (Robert Duvall co-produced�or maybe his Tender Mercies character did), and the final scene is a cornball stinker. But there’s a grounded and shockingly credible turn by Colin Farrell as a Toby Keith�like superstar who throws Bad a lifeline�and the way Bridges looks at it, with both rage and relief and then rage at his own relief, would make a great C&W song. — David Edelstein

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New York Magazine Reviews

• David Edelstein's Full Review (12/21/09)