Review – Crazy Heart
BluRay Release Date: April 29, 2010
BluRay Shipped From Netflix: May 18, 2010
I really do understand why Jeff Bridges was the darling this awards season. Let’s face it, there are very few actors who can pull off character roles so effortlessly that they can transform them into leading roles. Bridges is one of the few. The pity is that he was rewarded for the wrong film.
Crazy Heart is enjoyable enough but it lacks focus and really has very little story to tell. Is it a portrait of life on the road? Not really. Is it a drunk pic? No, not that either. How about a well-rounded character study? Nope, it’s too shallow. It’s all technically well done but the first rule of Movie Club is you have to have a story to tell, right? I’d argue that even documentary filmmakers today abide by that rule so why was this movie such an awards fave? I think it was simply that everyone wanted to see The Dude win something and this was probably the closest they thought he’d come to an “academy award-winning picture”. It’s a prestige title, a small, personal film, and it’s built with pride in the USA. Too bad it had nothing new to say.
I’ve seen all the alkie films, from the biopics about Hemmingway to Leaving Las Vegas and all of them had one thing in common. They had a point. But now we’ve all seen them so many times that the new regime thinks having a point is a little bit much. No, the postmodern approach is to have NO point. Sure, there’s some decent music (that really qualifies more as country-rock IMHO) and great performances, along with some genuine worry about Bad (The Dude’s character) but at the end of the day the stakes just aren’t very high. I’m not going to get into spoiler territory but I felt like there were a LOT of pulled punches in this film. As if the director were scared he might actually stimulate the audience. If The Dude were walking a tightrope here, he’d have been six inches above the ground with a safety harness and a big fat net.
Has everyone already forgotten Waylon Jennings? David Allan Coe? How about Hank Jr? You know-the guy on Monday Night Football? I KNOW you remember Willie Nelson, right? These are the real people (in the genre known as outlaw country) that The Dude’s character was based upon and their lives were infinitely more dramatic and interesting than the composite created for this movie! What was the problem? Did Hank Jr. copyright the whole falling off the mountain onto your face bit? Why didn’t The Dude fall off the mountain onto his face??? That would have made a better movie. Instead he flips his car in an almost casual way. Really.
In addition, there’s the ever-confusing casting choices. The Dude is fine as a has-been country singer but we have Maggie Gyllenhaal (try spelling that sometime) as the confounding love interest. I just don’t get her appeal, but besides that she does a good job here. Better than her work in other films at least. We also get the rare treat of watching Colin Farrell struggle to reproduce an authentic accent from some place in the American South that isn’t populated by Irish immigrants. On this count he fails and the fact that he’s struggling makes him act too hard in most of his scenes. Seriously, who cast this thing?
And one more thing- why why why do we keep seeing The Dude in various states of undress?! He’s not an attractive man, Hollywood! He needs that gut covered at all times. His man-boobs are bigger than my first wife’s rack. Now I’m really scared of what we might get a flash of in Tron Legacy!
