Review: 'Crazy Heart'

There's a powerful symmetry at work in "Crazy Heart" that's impossible to resist. It's a parallel between protagonist Bad Blake, a country singer whose entire life has led him to a nadir of disintegration, and star Jeff Bridges, whose exceptional film choices have put him at the height of his powers just in time to make Mr. Blake the capstone role of his career.

It's a mark of how fine a performance Bridges gives that it succeeds beautifully even though the besotted, bedeviled country singer has been an overly familiar popular culture staple (Rip Torn in "Payday," Robert Duvall in "Tender Mercies," Hank Williams and Merle Haggard in their own lives) for forever.

No Jeff Bridges performance, however, ends up looking anything like familiar. With dozens of roles -- as well as four Oscar nominations (a fifth for this one is a lock) -- behind him in a nearly 40-year career, he has a deep understanding that great acting is not self-conscious but a result of seamless transformation into someone else.

As written and directed by first-time filmmaker Scott Cooper, Bad Blake at age 57 is a broke and falling apart country music legend, the veteran of four marriages and non-stop dissipation now reduced to playing in bowling alley bars called "The Spare Room" and saying things like, "It's good to be here, at my age it's good to be anywhere" and "I used to be somebody, now I'm somebody else."

Cooper, himself an actor and musician with an eye for authenticity, has given Bridges the opportunity to deliver an all-out performance, playing someone who can be disgruntled and despairing, resentful and delightful and everything in between. Even when his character does things we've seen before, like heaving up backstage, it's Bridges' gift to make it seem honest and real.

On a par with Bridges' acting, and a sine qua non for "Crazy Heart's" success, is the excellent music he sings. There are great country songs, including Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" and Waylon Jennings' "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" laced throughout the film, but the heart of Bad's act are the appealing melodies written for the picture by superb music producer T Bone Burnett and the late guitar player/songwriter Stephen Bruton. (Burnett and Ryan Bingham wrote the closing ballad "The Weary Kind.") Hearing Bad's way with these enticing songs delineates his character as much as his words or his actions.