Crazy Heart ticks pretty much every single one of these boxes, so it's hardly surprisingly that it walked away with a swag of awards.
Jeff Bridges stars as the broken-down, hard-drinking, over-the-hill country music singer Bad Blake in Crazy Heart - a music legend well past his prime that is ready to throw in the towel. Traveling
from ghost town to ghost town, crappy club to crappy bar, watching his
protégé shoot up the charts... there is little left that interests Bad
Blake.
That is until Bad Blake encounters local newspaper
journalist, and single mum, Jean (Maggie "Not Sure If She Is Sexy Or
Scummy" Gyllenhaal) who could be the only way for Blake to reconnect to
his disjointed life.
Much like George Clooney in Up In The Air, Crazy Heart
is a deceptively plain, simple (and almost boring) film which manages
to rise above the pack thanks solely to the charm and on-screen
presence of it's lead player.
Jeff Bridges is truly astounding
and utterly captivating in each and every scene here - baring in mind,
he spends more screen time chain smoking and drinking than actually
speaking. Believe me - if you weren't a fan of whiskey and cigarettes before Crazy Heart, you will be racing to your local bar immediately after.
Performances aside, however, as a film Crazy Heart is in dire needs of a defibrillator.
There
are so many holes, so many plot tangents not explored (which really
should be), a second half which really moves nowhere and an ending that
wraps up far to nicely and contradicts almost everything we hope to see
from a film which is supposedly not just about redemption - but about earning that redemption.
Considering Crazy Heart is more or less The Wrestler 2 : Bad Blake's Country & Western Adventure,
director Scott Cooper really misses the mark in capitalising on the
good work of the first half of the film, which is a real shame.
Well
worth checking out (if only to see how much Colin Farrell looks like
the lead singer from the mid 90s band Live), but ultimately Crazy Heart needs some bigger Crazy Balls to really be considered as something more than "Just an OK Movie". DVD Special Features
The real appeal of this movie is the Soundtrack, so be sure to grab
a copy of that before anything else. However, when it comes to DVD
Special Features it's a case of "More of the Same".
Included
here are Deleted Scenes, as well as Alternate Music Cuts : Bad Plays
Somebody Else In Santa Fe; Jean Helps Bad Pack Up; Bad Visits Tommy
Backstage; Bad and Jean in Taos; Encouragement from Wayne; Bad Relapses. It's worth grabbing if you're a music fan.
Conclusion:
Movie 68% Extras: 60%
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