Crazy Heart

Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeff Bridges. Directed by Scott Cooper. M.

REVIEWED BY DAVID MANNING

Last updated 11:27 04/03/2010

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"Where did all those songs come from?'' small-town newspaper reporter Jean Craddock asks once-famous, now struggling country singer Bad Blake. ''Life, unfortunately,'' he replies.

More specifically, life's down side. Hard times and heartbreak are the fodder of country music and Bad Blake knows that side all too well.

He's 57, broke, alcoholic and a chain-smoker whose career is going nowhere, except to play one-night stands in bowling alleys and bars with picked-up local bands. It's a rocky road and it isn't getting any shorter.

The lyrics of his songs tell his story: ''I used to be somebody, now I'm somebody else'', or ''Funny how fallin' feels like flyin' for a while'', or ''Whiskey has been a thorn in your side''.

But meeting Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a single mum with a four-year-old son who says she's made mistakes but is trying not to make them twice, gives Bad a reason to begin a process of recognition, reconciliation and redemption.

There's also a chance to resurrect his career by opening for popular country singer Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), for whom Bad was once a mentor, but who Bad now regards with a mixture of stubborn pride and resentment. And there's also a son Bad abandoned as a child and has neglected since. ''I wasn't there even when I was,'' he confesses.

But this is a story of second chances, written by Scott Cooper, who adapted Thomas Cobb's 1987 novel, with Cooper also providing emotionally honest, laidback direction.

''Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try,'' Bad sings but will good intentions be enough?

Jeff Bridges has received his fifth Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Bad Blake, which could become his career-defining role.

While he's won praise for several films, the movie with which he has probably been most identified was The Big Lebowski. And there is an element of ''the Dude'' in Bridges's Bad, just as one can also glimpse bits of Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams and Willie Nelson in his character.

The movie also recalls another one about a down-and-out middle-aged country singer, Tender Mercies (1983), especially since that movie's star, Robert Duvall, shows up here as a bar-owner friend of Bad's.

A more recent similar movie is last year's The Wrestler, in which Mickey Rourke played a professional wrestler past his heyday who faces health problems, begins a relationship with a younger woman and tries to reconcile with an abandoned child.
As in both of those movies, the weight falls on the leading actor and Bridges plays Bad as if he were a second skin, giving the grizzled, shambling singer a boozy, outlaw charm. Bridges even does his own singing (as does Farrell), most of the songs written by T Bone Burnett or the late Stephen Bruton.

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Overall, there's the same kind of familiarity here that there is in most country music songs. At one point, when Jean thinks she's heard a song Bad is nonchalantly singing, he says ''That's the way it is with the good ones - you're sure you've heard them before''. Crazy Heart is a good one and Bridges provides a compelling reason to experience it.

- © Fairfax NZ News