Crazy Heart

Winner of the 2010 Oscar for Best Actor (for Jeff Bridges), nominated for Best Supporting Actress (for Maggie Gyllenhaal). After four previous nominations since 1972, three for supporting actor, and one for lead actor, Jeff Bridges finally takes home the statue! This award was particularly satisfying to me as a movie fan for two reasons. The first is that I think Jeff Bridges is possibly the most underrated actor of his time. Bridges is always compelling in his performances, even in movies that are beneath his level of talent, and I have yet to see a film with him in it that was not made more enjoyable as a direct result of his presence. That he has been nominated so few times, and that it took this long for him to finally win, should be a crime.

The second reason is the performance itself. So many times, when an actor wins an Oscar so long after he really should have, the award is passed off as being a "make-up" Oscar - a less deserving performance is awarded with the statue to make up for the fact that so many more deserving performances by that actor have been overlooked (see Al Pacino). The strength of this performance, I feel, leaves no room for doubters to diminish the value of Bridges' Oscar by claiming that this was a make-up. It is a rare thing for me to find a performance by a well-known actor in which he so completely inhabits the role that I stop seeing the famous actor because I can only see the character. This is one of those rare roles. In fact, I felt throughout the film that I was watching Kris Kristofferson (who, having been a friend of Bridges' since the two worked together on Heaven's Gate, was almost certainly a heavy influence on this performance), rather than Jeff Bridges.

The film tells the story of Bad Blake, an aging country singer, long past his glory days, alcoholic and in ill-health, who is trying to turn his life and his career around. The story is solid, though it doesn't exactly break any new ground - it is essentially the same story as last year's The Wrestler, but with country music instead of professional wrestling as the backdrop. The supporting cast is strong, topped by Maggie Gyllenhaal as the young reporter and single mother who inspires Blake to get his life back together, and Colin Farrell as the former protege, now resented by Blake for having achieved the superstardom that Blake missed out on. It all feels a bit familiar, it's true, but this is possibly the best performance of Jeff Bridges' career, and that alone makes it worth a strong recommendation.