Film Review: Crazy Heart

Two weeks ago I saw Crazy Heart, and now I'm finally going to share my thoughts. It should be noted that I didn't need to wait this long: it wasn't such a powerful experience that I needed to fully digest it before producing a reasoned response. It was just laziness.
Usually at the end of the year there are a whole list of awards-bait movies that I want to see, but this year was different. There was Crazy Heart, and then maybe Nine, though I've soured a little in my excitement for that one. That's it. Congratulations on being uninteresting and uninspired this year, movie industry.
Anyway, for a person who liked The Wrestler so much just a year ago, it's impossible for me not to compare Crazy Heart to it. A washed-up entertainer slumming around trying to reclaim past glory, while having hit-and-miss experiences with family/lovers, all held together by a dominating performance by the lead actor. Yes, Jeff Bridges really is pretty great in this. Unfortunately for the film, nothing much else about it rises above the level of average.
First, like a lot of people, I will always have a special fondness for Bridges thanks to his appearance as The Dude. (There is actually an obvious but great homage in this movie about thirty minutes in involving sunglasses and a trash can.) His Dudeness though tends to help obscure or marginalize the fact that he really is a good actor with interesting abilities, which are on full display here. He plays simple about as well as anyone, and by "simple" I don't mean dumb but rather uncomplicated. This is a lot tougher and nuanced to act out than you might at first think. One way to think about it is to conjure the stereotype of Oscar-bait roles: handicapped or other obviously-challenged people. Jeff Bridges excels in roles that are just the opposite: people who project no dominating characteristic, other than simply being themselves. That he may have succeeded in this task so much as to be an Oscar contender is all the endorsement you should really need.
Aside from Jeff Bridges, I can't really recommend much else in this film. It stands up as an average one, not a failure or anything but only notable for his presence. Unlike The Wrestler, there was nothing in it's style or delivery that I found interesting, and its ending was ridiculously inferior. As a side note, I'll comment briefly on Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is weirdly cast as Bridges's love interest. She seems to be a pretty trendy actress right now, someone for whom it is fashionable to say you really love and respect as a thespian. I don't see it. She's not bad or anything, and is perfectly capable of giving you a passable performance, but I've never been impressed. She seems to still be fairly young so maybe she'll become something worth talking about, but as for right now let's not make her out to be something she isn't. She's kinda like a less-accomplished female Matt Damon.
My final note here is only slightly relevant to Crazy Heart. Robert Duvall plays a small role as the friend of Jeff Bridges's character, and while he does a typically fine job with it, the role is small and the character is not very interesting or essential to the story. Ultimately forgettable, though that's not Duvall's fault, which brings me to my point. It's time for Robert Duvall to get a big lead role in a film, a role that should either be written specifically for him or that fits him like a glove. Duvall has been an excellent actor for a long time and I'm not sure he's really fully gotten his due. Even better, in his later years, his on-screen persona has really taken on a life of its own. I'd like to think that Duvall was choice #1A for Tommy Lee Jones's character in No Country for Old Men, because he would have been perfect for it. He's gotten to the point in his career where he doesn't even need to act much if you give him the right role. I mean that as complimentary, not like how you might disparagingly say the same thing about Denzel Washington. Duvall has an irrepresible screen personality, and he's clearly capable of using it to dominate a film.
So after I mentioned most of this to Sara she went to IMDB to check him out, and reported back to me that Duvall is scheduled to play the role of Don Quixote in an upcoming film. I can only hope that his part is the lead, because that actually sounds like exactly the kind of forum I'm hoping for.