Review

Review Date: 17-January-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Crazy Heart (2009)

Exactly one year ago I saw The Wrestler,, an award magnet of a movie that reminded everyone why Mickey Rourke was once considered the best actor of his generation. This year that kind of nostalgic adoration is being lavished on Jeff Bridges. His star turn in Crazy Heart cannot be viewed as a comeback, but it too is a career-defining, Oscar-worthy portrayal of a man who has been around the block many times and has almost run out of gas.

Bridges, a hottie despite advancing years, is the perfect choice to play waning country music star "Bad" Blake. Bad's career needs resuscitation only slightly more than his body. Broke and on the road between one seedy venue and the next, he lives primarily on cigarettes and alcohol. (Watching him, it dawned on me what "chain smoking" means: the constant cycle of lighting a new cigarette from the butt of the just-finished one.) During a gig in a bowling alley in some Southwest town, he has to run off stage to puke, which is apparently a familiar condition. Yet for all his decrepitude he possesses Bridges' quiet dignity and seems to know he has squandered it. This may explain why he is capable of writing some great country songs (just as the actor is capable of singing them).

Whatever Bad's claim to individual worth, it attracts a reporter named Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who drops in one day for an interview. Bad has a routine of one-night stands plus four ex-wives to recollect when he's alone, so meeting someone attentive and young with whom he really clicks comes as a delicious surprise. Jean is a single mother with her own destructive habit of hooking up with the wrong sort of man. She gives Bad a go, allowing him into her home and into the fatherless void in her son's life. Bad gains a sense of One Last Shot from this relationship and from a reunion with his former protégé (Colin Farrell in an uncredited appearance, trading his Irish lilt for an American twang and revealing that he can carry a tune as well).

If George Clooney's businessman in Up in the Air is forced to learn that he cannot recover lost chances, the older and more beat-up country star cannot be expected to find happily ever after so late in life. The poignancy of Crazy Heart lies in the fact that hope springs eternal. Poor odds and a major defeat notwithstanding, Bad manages to expect something better from himself and possibly for himself. It may be crazy to keep on trucking like he does, but it is also one of the lovelier qualities of his humanity.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.