The Crazy Heart is this years The Wrestler. A down on his luck aging country musician battling an addiction to alcohol, who's stuck playing at small town bars and bowling allies, attempts a comeback to try and revive his dead end career.
Jeff Bridges stars as the aging has been Bad Blake, one of the most bad-ass names I've ever heard used on screen. Right in the first scene we see the type of person Bad Black is as he parks his old busted up pick-up truck in the empty parking lot of a bowling alley, steps out with his pants unbuttoned growling and moaning, and dumps his urine out of the plastic bottle from his truck onto the pavement. He's down on his luck. Later we see that he's a raging alcoholic and heavy smoker who can't give the whiskey bottle a rest. Bad Blake's got talent though. After he meets Jean, a local reporter, and agrees to give her an interview they both end up falling for each other. But Bad still doesn't change his whiskey ways. After he loses her young son in a crowded mall while trying to get a drink at a bar she draws the line and leaves him. I won't give much more away but throughout the film he works on one particular song (The Weary Kind) and by the end of the film it fits in perfectly.
The supporting cast did it's job but not much more other than Robert Duvall who plays as Bad's good friend and mentor, Wayne. Colin Farrell was descent I thought as rising country star Tommy Sweet, who was once mentored by Bad. He actually plays a pretty big part in the film and his character is an important one as he really cares about Bad and helps him come back into the country scene. It was a role that could have easily been laughable but I thought he did a pretty good job. Scott Cooper also did a good job at directing and I'll be looking forward to his next feature. What a year it's been for first time directors, first Duncan Jones with Moon, Tom Ford with A Single Man, and now Scott Cooper with Crazy Heart. Just shows that there's lots of talent out there waiting to be discovered. Another cool little thing I noticed were Bad Blake's references to The Dude from The Big Lebowski. The very first scene where does he pull up to?? A bowling alley. There was another scene too where he runs off stage and outside to throw-up in a garbage can losing his glasses in it, he takes them right out and puts them right back on again. This also happened in Lebowski when he gets his head dunked in the toilet, and he pulls them right out and puts them right back on. Just something kinda cool that I noticed, there may be more but I'll have to wait until blu-ray. I give Crazy Heart 4 and 1/2 outa 5, Jeff Bridges was fantastic.
