Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a good movie, but not a great one. It's a little too long and relies heavily on the cast to carry a story that's not sturdy enough on its own. Fortunately, the film has Clint Eastwood, arguably in his prime (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot lands between The High Plains Drifter and The Outlaw Josey Wales), and a young and hungry Jeff Bridges, who lights up every scene he's in, as he continues to do almost without exception (King Kong, I'm looking at you...) So when I watched Crazy Heart, lots of little things reminded me of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, even if the films aren't thematically similar.
Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, a country rebel in the Waylon Jennings / Merle Haggard / Kris Kristofferson mold, a survivor of "old" country music. He peaked some time in the seventies (maybe eighties) and has been going downhill ever since. Blake plays bowling alleys and (if he's lucky) run-down honky tonk bars, while his protege Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) adapted Blake's music to the pop-country aesthetic and is selling out arenas across the U.S. Despite Sweet's success, he continues to reach out to Blake and is rebuffed via their mutual manager, Bill Wilson (Tom Bower). Blake's not ready to take second fiddle, even if it beats driving around the midwest in a truck and resorting to trading his waning fame for free liquor.Blake still has a way with the ladies, so when a club owner's niece in Santa Fe asks to do a profile on him, Blake wins her over in small steps. Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is younger than Blake, but already has a divorce and a young son in her life, and she doesn't trust the perennially drunk, irresponsible, wandering crooner. But there's a charm to "Bad" (who refuses to reveal his real first name to Jean), and somewhere inside that wreck of a man is the chance to turn it all around. Or is there?
I'll give Crazy Heart's writer / director credit for going the Up in the Air route towards redemption; the film settles on small victories rather than the generic "change your life in two hours" that movies like Crazy Heart would do otherwise. Blake wants to start over, or thinks he does, but he's still irresponsible and he still makes some big mistakes. Mistakes that some movies would let slide for the happy ending. Crazy Heart settles for a happy ending, but not the one you're expecting from the trailers.
At 111 minutes, Crazy Heart is a little too long, and more than once in the last third of the film I felt like "that's just padding. It doesn't need to be here." Like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, it's a good movie, but not a great one. Jeff Bridges is great as Bad Blake, and despite the post-awards season backlash that this was an "Oscar grab" or "not his best work", I disagree. Bridges deserved the Academy Award for Crazy Heart, because it's not quite the same Jeff Bridges role you usually see. There's a weight to Bad Blake, a heavy heartedness that you only catch glimpses of in other movies - like the end of The Men Who Stare at Goats, a film where he otherwise plays an entertaining variation on The Dude. Bridges is imminently watchable in Crazy Heart, even when he has to tow the weaker plot points about AA and asking for forgiveness when he doesn't deserve it.
That Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall (who plays Blake's father, Wayne) register at all is a testament to their acting, because there's not a lot of role for either of them to play. Jean Craddock is around mostly to facilitate Blake playing with Jack Nation's Buddy, and while she gets a moment here and there, even by the end of the film it's hard to really attribute much of a character to her. Robert Duvall (who played a similar role to Blake in Tender Mercies) floats in and out of the second half of the film and just barely makes an impression. Admittedly, this is Bridges' film, although one other actor gives him a run for the money.
I have to admit that I was never much of a Colin Farrell fan before In Bruges. To that point I'd seen him in Alexander, Miami Vice, and Minority Report, and while I didn't dislike him, Farrell wasn't really someone I was paying any attention to. However, after watching In Bruges, The New World, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Crazy Heart, I find myself increasingly being won over.
Tommy Sweet could have, in other hands, been a one-note role: the young up and comer that learns from the best and becomes bigger than his mentor, only to throw him a bone now and then. It's a thankless role, one that easily registers as "villain" in this type of movie, but not the way Farrell plays Sweet. He seems genuinely awed by Blake, even in the twilight of his career, and when he tries to honor it by asking Blake to open for him (and sneaking on-stage to be with his hero), Bad takes it as upstaging.
The men have a genuine disagreement over a collaboration that didn't happen before the story takes place, but Tommy Sweet is no one-note villain. Farrell plays Tommy as a man grateful for the success he's had, indebted to Blake for it, but frustrated that his mentor resents his success. Farrell and Bridges (who also do their own singing) are fantastic, yet you'd barely know the former was in the based on the ads, the posters, and press material, which I'm not sure comes from Farrell, Cooper, or 20th Century Fox. Either way, the movie is worth checking out for the two country singers, if nothing else.
Like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, I have no regrets about seeing Crazy Heart, although I'm unlikely to rush out and watch it again. It's a solid, if unspectacular, movie that adheres to certain formulas and eschews others. The film is well acted, even if the script doesn't always seem to be there for the cast, but I'd certainly recommend checking it out. There are better movies out there, yes, but Crazy Heart - like Bad Blake - has its own amiable charm.
Oh, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is fun too, especially if you like Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, or Gary Busey.
No comments:
Post a Comment