Crazy Heart

Review by Sean Lynch

Dare I say it, but the Oscar race has become a little farcical in recent years. No longer are films regarded for their quality (or the traditional "playing a spaz" factor), but moreso for their ability to adhere to strict "Win Me An Award" rules.

Rules such as studios nominating a film that it would be overtly politically incorrect NOT to vote for, or having an actor play hardly his best role but who has been around for years, or (and this one seems to be the go-to) a biography about a troubled entertainer.

Crazy Heart ticks pretty much every single one of these boxes...

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 fellow Oscar favourite 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 a worthy Oscar contender and something more than "Just OK".

3 out of 5

Crazy Heart
Australian release: 18th February, 2010
Official Site: Crazy Heart
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall
Director: Scott Cooper