Directed by Scott Cooper
Starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Jack Nation

Indie films can be a double-edged sword. On one hand you can get a really fresh and touching piece of cinema made comfortably outside the Hollywood studio system. On the other hand it can lead to a pretentious wannabe art house pictures that are just plain fucking boring and a huge waste of time.

Bridges plays a washed up country singer Bad Blake who has been eclipsed in the spotlight by his protege Tommy Sweet (Farrell). He's a boozer and falls for a reporter (Gyllenhaal) who's come to make a story of him. She is a single mom raising her 4 year old son and trouble ensues when Blake can't quit the bottle around the kid.

Bridges does a wonderful job with his seemingly doomed character and rightfully won the coveted Oscar for his performance. Gyllenhaal and the rest of the supporting cast are finely tuned all the way to Duvall who also produced the film. The problem for me at least was that despite all the hard work from the cast, I just didn't care for any of the characters. Crazy Heart is a film that will no doubt appeal to major audiences looking for an intimate human story, but something for me personally felt artificial about the script. The over the hill burned out has been tale has been done many many times before and though the end result is nowhere near pretentious art house fodder, it still somehow fails to be fresh.

KITEYTETTYNÄ SINIVALKOISILLE
Crazy Heart on vahvojen näyttelijäsuoritusten esimerkki, mutta tarinan tuoreuden puute syö tehoja lopulta efortilta. Joku voisi argumentoida että 99% Hollywoodin toimintarainoista on ennalta-arvattavaa tusinatavaraa ja vaikken sitä vastaan väitäkkään, niin sanoisin silti, että nimenomaan Crazy Heartin kaltaisilta elokuvilta se ON minimivaatimus.

Crazy Heart at IMDb