Crazy Heart

This film does a lot right but has one major flaw that keeps it form being a truly satisfying experience. Jeff Bridges is great as an aging country star named Bad Blake who's stuck playing crappy gigs at local bars (and in one case a bowling alley) while slowly drinking himself to death. Eventually he stumbles across two possible forms of redemption. One, in the form of a former sideman named Tommy Sweet (played by Colin Farrell), who has become a Tim McGraw-esque country star and offers Bad a chance to open and write songs for him. The other is a single mother (Maggie Gyllenhal, another of the Zooey Daschenal all-stars - a woman people always try to convince me is attractive but I'm still undecided about) who he sees as a way to make up for all his past life mistakes. These two stories drive the film, and represent its good and bad aspects.

On the positive side the film really captures the drudgery of the road for a musician. It gets a lot of little details right (i.e. too small bandstands, shoddy accommodations, and eternal drives every day from gig to gig) and more importantly nails the music. All of Bad's songs sound authentic, and the portrayal of Tommy's pop-country sound is right on. Unfortunately all of the subtlety and nuance the films exhibits in its portrayal of a musicians life is lost in the other subplot.

Bad's entire relationship with Gyllenhal's character feels unnecessary at best and cliched at worst. In fact there is one scene (in her bedroom after he composes a song) where I was actually cringing at how badly it was mis-played. The climactic moment of their relationship also felt more mechanistic than real and rather than giving me any kind of emotional charge, it just reminded of how stupid little kids actually are (you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it). Much like the daughter subplot in The Wrestler (the film Crazy Heart will probably most compared to, and with reason), I wish the filmmakers had completely excised this storyline (or at least scaled it back) and just let the audience enjoy their realistic and moving portrayal of a complex character. The film is still worth seeing (Bridges is probably a lock for an academy award nomination, and at least one of the songs should as well), and its problems don't kill it by any means. Just go in with tempered expectations.