Review of Crazy Heart (2009) by Dinesh P — 20 May 2012

I really, really wanted to like this movie. Jeff Bridges is one of the finest actors this good, green earth has known, and I was quite intrigued by this movie's concept with him portraying a beat down, washed up country musician. It's unfortunate, then, that the movie ends up being a long winded, meandering anti-drinking campaign. There's really nothing here worth noting...Bridges delivers a fine performance, but certainly not his best. There is practically no chemistry between him and co-star Maggie Gyllenhaal (who still fails to impress me as an actress or the 'knockout' that so many seem to think she is), and the directionless story seems to go on and on and on until it finds an adequate stopping point.

Nothing ever seems to drive the story or characters and watching them live out their uneventful lives for two hours nearly drove me to insanity. Not to mention the random supporting characters who have no say or actual influence on anything that happens to Bridges' character (Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall both painfully underused). The long series of events that make up this movie become more and more flaccid as they go along that by the its long awaited end, it feels like a long deflation of a half baked idea.