Saturday, January 30, 2010

Crazy Heart - Movie Review

Crazy Heart (R) 108 minutes B
An old fart steals a young heart and lives to sing about it

Starring Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Sarah Jane Morris.

With all due respect, Jeff Bridges is not an ugly guy but he plays one in this film. Maggie Gyllenhaal is not ugly (quite the contrary), so the obvious question is why would her character fall for Bad Blake (Bridges)- a broke, sweaty, alcoholic, chain smoking, washed up country music singer old enough to be her father?

The answer is why Jeff Bridges is the favorite to win the Oscar and the other answer is because the heart wants what the heart wants- it's unexplainable. On my radar of impossible hook-ups this ranks pretty high but it's not inconceivable.

Crazy Heart reminded me a lot of last year's film The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke & Marisa Tomei, it's essentially the same film except Bridges is a former country music star and Gyllenhaal is a music journalist.

I'm always up for a good "broken man" story that's introspective, mature and well-crafted... this is precisely it. Newsweek critic David Ansen said it best when he stated that the film is "like a good country song- not because it tells you something new, but because it tells it well."

The film is based on the Thomas Cobb novel of the same name.

1 comment:

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