Akira Kurosawa said that even a great director couldn’t make a great film from a mediocre script. However, he never said what would happen to a great script with mediocre actors. I guess he couldn’t predict the coming of Crazy Heart.
Don’t be misled by that statement. Not everyone in the film was bad. In fact, Jeff Bridges gave us one of the best of his career. Sadly, he had to share several scenes with Maggie Gyllenhaal and even Bridges wasn’t able to raise her to the right level.
The best part of the bad parts was when everyone in the theatre laughed as Colin Farrell wandered onto the screen. It wasn’t supposed to be funny but somehow it was.
I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Maybe I should tell you about the movie before I tell you what I didn’t like. (And maybe I should start writing more positive stuff. This blog is making me out to be a movie asshole. I seem to hate everything.)
Bad Blake is a great country music musician and writer but unfortunately he’s also a drunk. While on his six show tour through the Southwest U.S. he meets a young reporter in Santa Fe and falls in love while trying to reignite his career.
As I said Jeff Bridges was great. He has a great ability to play a loser. He was magical as The Dude in The Big Lebowski. In many ways he plays that same character. He’s overweight, hairy and wasted. But Bad is nothing like The Dude. I think this film wouldn’t be receiving the attention it is if it wasn’t for Bridges. There’s nothing unique about the character. He’s an old drunk that screwed up his life and is trying desperately to put it all back together. We see this movie at least fifteen times a year. The best example of it from last year was The Wrestler.
I know it’s unfair to waste my time talking about how a movie is like another movie but when you see so many movies, it gets old seeing the same thing over and over again. But there are very few themes. Because of this celluloid handicap, I enjoy raving about great performances. And I want to rave about Bridges.
RAVE.
There. That was nice.
It hurts me so much to have great performances held back by bad casting. Gyllenhaal is generally pretty good. I don’t think she is a bad actress, I just think she was poorly cast. She was too young and pretty. I think that we would have benefited from an actress a little older. It would’ve been a more believable character if the actress appeared to have a little more mileage on her.
Let’s jump back to The Wrestler. Marisa Tomei is a perfect example of how Gyllenhaal’s character should have been written. That I would’ve bought. I didn’t buy the love story in this film and the love story was the core of the film but it was the failure of the film.
I don’t even know what to say about Colin Farrell. I don’t know who is to blame for this. Do they not understand the baggage that comes with some actors? Colin Farrell is a talented actor. Tigerland and In Bruges are his best performances. But he’s a tool. A giant tool. When his career tanks he should do commercials for Craftsman because he’s a big tool. The audience I saw the movie with tonight would agree with me. That’s why we laughed at him every time he opened his mouth.
To end on a positive note and not on Colin Farrell’s toolishness, I’d like to mention that T-Bone Burnett’s music is spectacular. He’s the genius behind the music from O Brother Where Art Thou and the Crazy Heart theme will get stuck in your head.
See, I don’t hate everything.
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