Bridges excels with Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges gives the performance of a lifetime in this excellent redemption tale of a broken down country music artist. Bridges plays Bad Blake, a past-his-prime musician looking for one last break. He does all of his own voice work, and he succeeds in every way imaginable. This is an Oscar worthy performance. Perhaps the best lead performance of the last decade.

We first see Blake pull up to a bowling alley (a sly reference to Bridges' cult hero character the "Dude" from The Big Lebowski) getting ready to play a show with a local band. Bad starts to play and through the course of the show clearly becomes inebriated. This is where we start to see the faults in Bad. It is soon revealed he was once a huge star both, writing and performing. He also once had a protégé named Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), a Brad Paisley type, with crossover appeal. While touring the dives and joints of the back roads of Arizona and Texas, he meets a reporter that could change his life. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jean Craddock, a newspaper reporter that falls for Bad. She does not approve of all of his vices, and tells him to keep the alcohol away from her son Buddy (Jack Nation). Craddock and Blake hit it off, and are virtually inseparable. Bad and Buddy share a very close father-son relationship, and are equally inseparable. Gyllenhaal and Nation are just the right yin to Bridges yang. They do hit some rough patches together (I don't want to give anything away), but through those hard times, Blake realizes he positively has to change his ways. No review of this film would be complete with out mentioning the music; T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham do a fantastic job of writing music that toes the line between classics such as Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson (Bad Blake) to contemporaries Keith Urban and Brad Paisley (Tommy Sweet).

Standouts on the soundtrack include "Fallin' and Flyin'" and the Oscar Nominated "Weary Kind". Overall excellent performances, solid story, and great direction make this a can't miss picture.

**** For this very well-done musical/drama.