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Crazy Heart Discount.
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Crazy Heart Description:
A FADED COUNTRY MUSIC MUSICIAN IS FORCED TO REASSESS HIS DYSFUNCTIONAL LIFE DURING A DOOMED ROMANCE THAT ALSO INSPIRES HIM.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #9 in DVD
- Brand: TCFHE
- Released on: 2010-04-20
- Rating: R (Restricted)
- Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
- Number of discs: 1
- Running time: 112 minutes
Customer Reviews:
Jeff Bridges gives one of his finest performances!
Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a country music “star” whose fame has dimmed down to almost nothing. He’s almost always drunk; his “tour” involves him driving himself and his guitar from one really small, cheap venue to another and linking up with a local band who accompany him using cheat sheets. He is disheveled (frankly, he looks like Kris Kristofferson), and even when he showers, he looks like he’s in need of a cleaning and a comb. He’s had hit songs, and his aging fans (the few who remember him) are enthusiastic about seeing him, and when he can avoid throwing up from drinking, he can still put on a charming concert and usually take some woman back with him to his hotel for some company.
He has hit, quite frankly, just slightly above rock bottom. Yet one day, he grants an interview to a Santa Fe journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and sparks of mutual interest fly between the two almost immediately. The movie then embarks on a somewhat predictable “journey of redemption”…but it has enough things going for it to make this film rise well above the clichés that fill the two paragraphs I’ve just written.
Bad Blake is hardly a character we’ve never seen before. But as played by Jeff Bridges, we discover something new about him at every turn. He charms us, and actually makes it easy to see why a much younger woman like Gyllenhaal might find a place in her heart for him. His eagerness to be a positive force in the life of this single mother is an almost palpable thing…and we also get to watch as he derails his own efforts. To say that Bridges gives a “lived in” performance doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. Bridges is one of those great actors who has no vanity and no problem disappearing into his roles. It helps that he sings the terrific songs that were written for him, so that we get a genuine sense of Blake as a performer. We are able to see not only the worthwhile man behind the booze and dirty clothes, but the charismatic star that once was there and hasn’t completely died yet. Bridges gives, simply, the best male performance of 2009.
While Bridges is clearly the single most important reason the film rises above cliché, he is certainly helped by a very nice script, with lots of wry humor and tenderness and anger and anguish. It navigates through the clichés, not by ignoring them, but my giving them enough specificity that they no longer feel unoriginal.
The movie was filmed in New Mexico (my state…as anyone who reads my reviews knows) and the landscape perfectly compliments the tone of the movie. If it had been set in a lusher climate, something would have been lost. There is both the dryness and harshness of the landscape AND the welcome bursts of color…just like Blake has a harshness that is frequently belied by bursts of warmth and feeling.
The movie features fine acting throughout. Gyllenhaal is very good (although I scratch my head a bit over her Oscar nomination…I didn’t think she was THAT good), Robert Duval is funny and wise in his small role, and even Colin Farrell shows up as a big country star with a complicated history with Blake. Farrell is not entirely convincing as a country singer…but he pulls of the “star” attitude with ease. I appreciate that he was willing to take this tiny role…in the last couple of years, he has gotten serious about acting again, and has done much to redeem himself in my mind (his work in IN BRUGES was great).
This is a feel good movie that isn’t afraid to make us feel a little bad from time to time. But Jeff Bridges makes for the best of guides through this little, heartfelt film…and I highly recommend it for adults. Entertaining, fun, moving and well-crafted.
Crazy Heart
Nominated for Oscars in the Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best song race Crazy Heart is the character study of a country music legend spiraling down a rabbit hole of alcohol addiction. Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a country music legend who’s currently down on his luck, forced to play bowling alleys and small bars while his young former protege Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) plays the big gigs. Constantly drunk, Bad Blake becomes friendly with a single mother, Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who interviews him for a local Arizona newspaper. When things go wrong in their relationship, though, do in part to his alcoholism, Bad Blake re-examines his life and addictions.
Jeff Bridges is a legend. Son of Lloyd Bridges (remember McCroskey from Airplane!: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines”), Bridges got his start at a young age guesting on many of his father’s TV shows when they needed a kid to play a small part. Since then he’s been nominated for five Oscars (including his current nomination for Crazy Heart), and has played iconic characters from Kevin Flynn in TRON to The Dude in The Big Lebowski. With the body of work that he’s amassed over the years, it’s hard to believe that Jeff Bridges calls Bad Blake the role of a lifetime and the work he’s most proud of. And considering he’s the front runner for the Best Actor race at this year it would seem that it might possibly be his best work, which is really saying something.
Crazy Heart is the type of movie that is really made by it’s acting and music choices. It’s not the type of movie that makes any huge bold new declarations, or tries to really do anything particularly new, but that’s also it’s charm. It makes some choices that you don’t completely expect, such as you’d think that Bad Blake’s animosity toward Tommy Sweet would come from Sweet being a prick, but that’s not the case. Also the ending isn’t the sweet ending you’d expect from this type of movie either. These changes are refreshing as the movie tries to be it’s own movie and not a mix of cliches. What this movie is, is a great character study of a man who used to be great, but has fallen into the mire and is trying to dig his way back out but doesn’t know how.
What the movie really comes down to, though, is the acting which can be seen in the nominations it’s received. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jeff Bridges, despite a 28 year difference in age, really show great chemistry on the screen. This is one of the most important part of the movie, because this is what really drives the last act of the movie, and for the last act to be believable, the chemistry has to be believable. Jeff Bridges really steals the show, but I don’t think anyone doubted his abilities. Here, though, he truly shines and develops a character that you love even though he’s got more than his fare share of faults. I also have to mention Colin Farrell. At first, he didn’t seem too believable as a country star, but you really get that impression before you even hear him open his mouth. In the end he makes a serviceable country star, and I think he did extremely well. To add to that he, as well as Jeff Bridges, did his own singing in the movie which thoroughly impressed me as well.
This is another movie that I don’t really have anything bad to say about. The acting is amazing, the music is transcendent, and while the movie could have easily succumbed to cliches it avoids them with ease. I think this is what all musical biopics should be about. If you like music biopics, character studies, good music, or simply movies with great acting I highly recommend this movie.
5/5
Country Music and Salvation
Nicely done dramtatic tale of redemption and salvation from a drinking and smoking life on a dusty road filled with meaningless relationships and a generally cantankerous attitude A talented singer begins the road back to living a cleaner and more fulfilling existence after a traumatuic incident and health-related problems that escalate out of control. Shares a strong thematic affiliation with “The Wrestler.” Parenthetically, the music in this film sounded a lot better in the theater than the sound on the soundtrack CD and I’m not sure why. Could simply be that I need a new sound system.
Amazon.com
In a career filled with unforced, naturalistic performances, Jeff Bridges gives one of his finest in Crazy Heart. His oft-married, booze-soaked troubadour Bad Blake has just rolled into Santa Fe when he meets Maggie Gyllenhaal’s journalist Jean. “Where do all the songs come from?” she asks during their initial encounter. “Life, unfortunately,” he sighs. Against Jean’s better judgment, her fling with Blake blooms into a full-fledged relationship. Between gigs, Blake hangs out with the divorcée and her 4-year-old son, with whom he establishes an instant rapport, possibly because the musician is just an overgrown kid himself (and also because he hasn’t seen his own boy in years). While Blake plays juke joints, his protégé, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell, cast against type to fine effect), plays stadiums, but just when director Scott Cooper’s debut seems to be going down the same path as A Star Is Born, Sweet offers his mentor an opportunity that could revive his reputation–at the expense of his still-healthy ego. Between Jean and Tommy, things start looking up for Blake until a critical error puts his stab at redemption in jeopardy. Once Robert Duvall enters the scene as Blake’s favorite bartender, it’s clear that Cooper has Tender Mercies in his sights, but Crazy Heart, which features music by T-Bone Burnett and rough-hewn singing by its Golden Globe-winning star, plays more like a sincere cover version than a strikingly original composition. Still, like Duvall’s in Tender Mercies, Bridges’s performance is Oscar-worthy. –Kathleen C. Fennessy
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