Crazy Heart

Starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Directed by Scott Cooper. 112 minutes. Rated R.

You’d think an actor with Jeff Bridges’ talent and range would have won an Oscar by now. But winning an Academy Award includes being a good Hollywood citizen, and Bridges has made a cause out of subverting everything that Movietown holds dear. Until his portrayal of the country musician Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, that is.

This film, Bridges’ 73^rd, lands somewhere between the second half of Walk the Line, the fall and rise of Johnny Cash biopic, and George Clooney’s corporate Boomer coming of age story, Up in the Air. It’s got the full line of Jeff Bridges gritty, troubled accoutrement but it’s lighter weight and warmer. Think of it as the movie equivalent of Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline or discovering featherless bipeds on Mars. I think there’s a good chance that Crazy Heart may finally give the Academy a good excuse to honor the least celebrated major actor of his generation.

Although he was born Hollywood royalty, the son of Sea Hunt’s Lloyd Bridges and brother of Beau, Jeff Bridges didn’t seem to want that role. From the get-go he seemed committed to stunting his career growth by playing quirky characters like The Dude in The Big Lebowski or nasty ones like Jack Kelson in American Heart. Bridges’ performances are often stunning and complex, but he usually forgets to even wave in the direction of a Hollywood ending. That’s considered heresy in Beverley Hills if done too many times, with too little box office, and Bridges has rarely done anything else.

Crazy Hear is about an aging music legend universally loved and admired by everyone except himself. By the time we catch up with him in the opening credits, Bad Blake is a scruffy, sullen man driving an ancient Chevy Suburban through a desolate, seemingly endless landscape. He looks like he’s been heading for the horizon line for decades without a pit stop, the top button of his jeans unbuttoned to give this fat man and his belly more face time. He’s long ago left himself for road kill but just can’t seem to stay put.

Bad was once a top shelf entertainer, but now, pushing 60, he hasn’t written a song in years and he’s working the bottom of the country music food chain, trying to stay alive. He gets so sloppy drunk before his shows in the lounge areas of bowling alleys and kicker bars that you don’t think he’ll ever make it to the microphone; and when he does, you fear he’ll say something crude or insulting.

But Bad turns out to be not so bad. He comes alive when he’s singing for the audience and even seems to enjoy doing requests. His fans eat up his words like blue comfort food, all these variations on the Ur country song of never quite getting it right for very long in life or love. Bad’s got a wounded heart, not a crazy one, and he’s made a career out of it, but not a life.

Then along comes Jane Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a 30 something local reporter who wants to interview Mr. Blake. Gyllenhaal has the wonderfully casual feline grace of Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, liquid eyes large and wondering: how in the hell am I ever going to get out of this rut I’m in, but mouth giving no clues. Despite the difference in age and hygiene between Jane and Bad, there’s real chemistry between them. And like all people who are in love or hoping to be, they do their best to make the puzzle pieces fit even when they don’t.

And so it goes.

There are two entertaining sub-plots. Robert Duval (The Godfather, et.al.) plays Wayne, who is either Bad’s father and/or his AA sponsor, a tough love kind of guy, one of the few invulnerable to Bad’s charm. Approaching age 80, Duval can’t reach as far or as fast as he once did but he’s still a treat to watch.

Colin Farrell (The New World) plays Tommy Sweet, the next generation of country music star. He’s made his name and fortune singing Bad’s songs but Blake resents the way Tommy has made his original hardscrabble lyrics sound sweet and light. Like Jane, Tommy is free and clear of the myriad warts and tics afflicting Bad and this makes its plot point. But, like much of the story, this feels forced and artificial.

Crazy Heart may not be Jeff Bridges best film but it is the arguably the most tender-hearted and audience pleasing, as close to mainstream as this career iconoclast is ever likely to get. I’ll bet the farm that he wins Best Actor on March 7. It’s also possible that Bad Blake may become the iconic hero for this decade, the way Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock (The Graduate) was for the ‘60’s and James Dean’s Jim Stark (Rebel Without a Cause) was for the ‘50’s. Our beat-up nation sorely needs a mulligan right now, and Bad Blake just might be the ticket.

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