Crazy Heart

Are there two more ingratiating and approachable movie stars working today than Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal?  Sure, you have your Clooneys and Streeps, but face it, George and Meryl are not in our league.  No more than Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn ever were.  Without any aura of awe, it’s just a pleasure to spend two hours in the company of Jeff (shambling but equipoised) and Maggie (whose hunched shoulders look awkward one moment and elegant the next).  First-time writer-director Scott Cooper does not get in their way, or between them and us.  The story is familiar, but in good ways.  The presence of Robert Duvall makes explicit the derivation from Tender Mercies, one of my all-time faves.  The characters and setting – with an aging country singer getting too old for life on the road in the desert West, and the young woman who may be his salvation – are believably rendered (with a possible exception in the digs of a young single mother writing for a local newspaper).  Just when you think you know what well-traveled road the film is about to go down, something surprises you with a twist toward truth.  Just as Colin Farrell pops up with a surprising turn as a rising young country singer, Jeff’s one-time protege and now patron.  Both do their own singing, creditably, and the original songs have the authentic sound of hardscrabble poetry.  Within its compass, this little film does little wrong, and Bridges’ Oscar-winning performance as Bad Blake makes it big.  (2009, dvd)  *7*  (MC-83)