Title: Crazy Heart
Language: English
Director: Scott Cooper
Rating : ****
This is one those broody, bruisy movies that anyone who has been down on their luck — in love or life — will identify with (and frankly who amongst us, hasn’t?). Add to that a great country soundtrack, and it makes all that melancholic pain almost seductive!
Otis ‘Bad’ Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a chain-smoking, whiskey-swiveling broken down 57-year-old country musician — while once he was at the top of his game (read: charts), now he performs in small town bowling alleys and bars, managing only to get through the performances by numbing his senses with alcohol. His history of failed marriages is legendary and he has a 28-year-old son he hasn’t spoken to in years. Blake’s doctor has also warned him that his self-destructive lifestyle can have dire consequences on his health, but the badass that Blake is he simply smirks all warnings aside. Life looks bleak to say the least, without the odd lonesome tart that he manages to bed in every county as some form of affection.
That is till Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a young divorced journalist who comes to interview him, enters his life (or err…bed, should we say). Blake is smitten with Jean and her toddler son, suddenly re-finding himself in the warm confines of the love they shower on him. Wham!! They’re madly in love and everything looks lovely like it does through rose-tinted glasses…with Blake even making a massive effort to clean up his act and get sober.
Everything’s hunky-dory till one day Blake loses Jean’s son at a mall whilst getting a drink at a bar, and all hell breaks loose.
With a heart-breaking performance by Jeff Bridges and a strong supporting cast which includes Colin Farrell and the legendary Robert Duvall, Crazy Heart lingers on like a dry red wine in the throat long after the night is over.
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