Crazy Heart (2009)

Director:

Scott Cooper

Writers (WGA):

Scott Cooper (written by)
Thomas Cobb (novel)

Release Date:

5 February 2010 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Music | Romance

Tagline:

The harder the life, the sweeter the song.

Plot:

A faded country music musician is forced to reassess his dysfunctional life during a doomed romance that also inspires him.

Plot Keywords:

Journalist | Musician | Singer | Country Music | Bar

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 16 wins & 11 nominations

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Jeff Bridges	...	Bad Blake
James Keane	...	Manager
Anna Felix	...	Barmaid
Paul Herman	...	Jack Greene
Tom Bower	...	Bill Wilson
Ryan Bingham	...	Tony
Beth Grant	...	Jo Ann
Rick Dial	...	Wesley Barnes
Maggie Gyllenhaal	...	Jean Craddock
Debrianna Mansini	...	Ann
Jerry Handy	...	Cowboy (as Jerry Hardy)
Jack Nation	...	Buddy Craddock
Ryil Adamson	...	Ralphie
J. Michael Oliva	...	Bear (as J. Michael 'Yak' Oliva)
David Manzanares	...	Nick

Also Known As:

MPAA:

Rated R for language and brief sexuality.

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #45721) | UK:15 | Canada:14A (Alberta/Manitoba/Ontario) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (British Columbia) | Ireland:15A | Australia:M | Singapore:NC-16 | South Korea:15 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Philippines:R-13 (MTRCB) | Brazil:12 | Argentina:13 | Norway:A | Mexico:B | Japan:G | Sweden:Btl | Finland:S | Netherlands:12 | Portugal:M/12 | Peru:14

Filming Locations:

Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Company:

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Trivia:

Filmed in only 24 days.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Blake re-enters the stage at the bowling center, he puts his hat on loosely with the brim tilted to the front. A second later in the following shot, his hat is on tightly, with the brim tilted to the rear.

Quotes:

Bad Blake:Ain't rememberin' wonderful?

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Late Show with David Letterman: Episode #17.63" (2009)

Soundtrack:

The Weary Kind

You know you're in a state when you hand-pour your pee on a bowling alley.

There's a shot in a scene near the beginning of Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart that's so jarring that it has to have been a choice, but I can't for the life of me unpack what it means. Jeff Bridges plays forgotten country legend Bad Blake, drunk and down on his luck, a one-time great forced to play tiny New Mexico bars for tiny over-the-hill crowds. As he cruises into town in his rusty Suburban and empties out his pee bottle, he realizes that his manager has booked him to play in a bowling alley, where he begins to drink prior to the show. There's a shot of him at the bar that is an exact visual echo of Bridge's most famous character of recent years, the similarly booze-addled Dude from The Big Lebowski, famously bellying up to a bowling alley bar, talking to a cowboy. It's odd and unmistakable, as Bridges' the Dude in the Cohen Bros. first-cult-then-full-blown classic dopey caper movie has become iconic, his sozzled, affronted complaints as firmly lodged in the minds of movie folk as Travis Bickle's spookyisms or the monologue by the guy in Network who got mad and told everybody to go yell out the window.

Where the Dude's drunk and drugged wanderings seemed blessed, though, by a cinematic ray of Private Eye light that kept him safe through to the end of his caper, Bridges' Bad Blake is broken down, on the way out. A member of his backing band that he had mentored, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), has moved on to find incredible success on his own and exists, but is unwilling to do an album of duets that Blake and his lizard-skin booted agent need to pull his career out of the toilet. He meets a young journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who herself has had a rough patch and their bruised romance sees Blake back on some kind of road to life.

Bridges inhabits the role as thoroughly as is seemingly possible - he quite simply is Bad Blake. Much of the music (composed by T-Bone Burnett, who among other things did the music for the Coens' O Brother, Where Art Thou?) Bridges sings himself and he's got a not-half-bad country voice, but it's in the busted-boot gait and whisky-sipping slouch that Bridges carves the character out. The rest of the film is almost as good as he is. Cooper's script has a habit of freely dipping into the well of cliché - the whisky soaked forgotten crooner lost in the shadow of inauthentic "new country", salvation and sobriety at the feet of a sad single mother who doesn't want to be hurt again - but then at the last minute, swerving away into if not original then certainly less clichéd territory. Tommy Sweet, when he makes his entrance into the story, is not half the villain the first half of the film would have you believe, and Gyllenhaal's single mom is something a hair's breadth more interesting than a sucker for punishment, loyal to a fault. The film could have been a disaster, and at times it's half-way there, but there are enough smart choices in the script and good performances from interesting actors that the film ends up (for the most part) overcoming its own flaws.

It does country well, and it's as authentic as a film can be to a genre of music (like punk, or metal, or rap) that is itself so utterly cliché ridden that arguments over whether so-and-so is "real country" are a common fervent pastime for fans and the artists themselves. Bad Blake seems as much of a real, breathing human being as Merle Haggard or Waylon Jennings, which is obviously somewhat of a back-handed compliment. Crazy Heart's story is an old one: a busted down, down and out nobody screws up, hits bottom, and becomes somebody again. We've seen it before, but it has enough soul and Bridges' Blake has enough human hitch in his step, that it manages to be moving, if not refreshing. 7/10