Crazy Heart Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Crazy Heart Blu-ray Movie Review

Jeff Bridges earns his Oscar as Bad Blake, a has-been with an achy, breaky heart.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 21, 2010

There’s something familiar about Crazy Heart, like the fit of your oldest pair of jeans or the taste of your favorite brand of bourbon, familiar in the way that all country songs sound like variations on a theme—heartbreak and hard living, the transience of the good times and the regrets of the bad. Which brings us to Jeff Bridges’ Bad Blake, Crazy Heart’s fictional mash-up of Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings, a world-wearied alcoholic and country music has-been who sings lines like, “I used to be a somebody, but now I’m somebody else.” This character and his road-to-redemption certainly have a cinematic antecedent in 1983’s Tender Mercies—a skeletally similar story with Robert Duvall as the washed-up, recovering alkie country singer—but Jeff Bridges does justice to the trope of the emotionally broken troubadour in a way that nobody’s done before or since. The role could’ve easily been under or overplayed, ascetically remote or mawkishly cliché, but Bridges’ craft is invisible—he simply is his onscreen persona. We’ve all heard this tune before, but I like to think of Crazy Heart as a cover song that’s just as good as the original.

Bad Blake

As the film opens, Bad Blake’s rusty Silverado pulls up to the bowling alley where he’ll be playing later that night. It’s the latest in the string of dive bars and rinky-dink venues he’s toured since disappearing years ago from the country music spotlight. The owner of the dump is a longtime fan, but Bad can’t even get a tab at the bar—though he is offered all the free bowling he wants. Screw this. He lopes off to his motel room to nurse a bottle of bourbon while his pick-up band frets about the night’s set. Bad finally turns up, bragging about how he hasn’t missed “a [expletive] show in his whole [expletive] life,” but he has to run offstage mid-song to wretch the presumably flammable contents of his stomach into a trash can. We get the sense that this is not an isolated occurrence. Still, the meager crowd is understanding, clapping and singing along to all his old hits, and the groupies—older, sallower, desperate—still flock to sleep with the one-time star. Things go a bit better—less vomitous, at least—in Santa Fe, the next town down the line, where journalist and single mom Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) sequesters Bad for an interview, earning his trust and affection in the process. Their love deepens when Bad holes up at her place to write songs after breaking his leg, but Jean knows a relationship with the much older hard drinker is a gamble at best. She has a son who needs a father figure, and Blake isn’t exactly proven in that regard—he’s got four ex-wives and a son he hasn’t seen in twenty-odd years.

Crazy Heart toys with the age-old, “finding redemption in the arms of a good woman” device, but the film is ultimately more emotionally intricate—and less narratively predictable— than that. Though the plot has relatively few turns, the story is told in the subtlety of Bad and Jean’s ever shifting feelings and motivations. Jean is certainly the catalyst for Bad’s turn-around, and her relative normalcy is a stabilizing force—at home with her, he makes biscuits and teaches her son how to play paper football—but Bad’s struggle with alcoholism and the specters of his former success is a deeply internal affair. He’s essentially blinded by egoism until one drunken slip-up—a nearly unforgivable offense—opens his eyes to the effect that his addiction has on those around him. At one point, Robert Duvall shows up as one of Blake’s old pals, a giver of sage advice who helps him in and out of rehab. The Tender Mercies star—who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a broke-to-shit country western rambler—lends the film some ironic been there before reflexivity that actually gives, in some strange way, added thematic resonance to his interactions with Bridges. If you’ve seen Tender Mercies, anyhow. (Which you should—it’s quite good.) The biggest surprise, however, is Colin Farrel—uncredited here—as Tommy, Bad Blake’s erstwhile protégé, a cross-over country superstar whose shaky relationship with Bad is of the I owe you my career, but I’ve got my own life to live variety. Who’d have thought the Oirish former bad-boy could do such a convincing down-home Texan drawl?

There’s really not a poor performance to be found in Crazy Heart. The film isn’t your usual Oscar bait, as over the top emoting is kept to a minimum in favor of wounded, scarred, and re-wounded portrayals that ache with real feeling. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character is perhaps the script’s weakest link—her reasons for saddling up with Bad at all are never fully developed—but her big brimming eyes, full of hope and pain, fill out her story in ways that words never could. Of course, Jeff Bridges is center stage here, and his blend of brusque swagger, groggy charm, and pent-up don’t give a shit-ness, mixed with sudden flashes of vulnerability and a physicality that suggests a body that’s seen much better days, is worth its weight in Oscar gold. Plus—no surprise—he can sing, very nearly one-upping Joaquin Phoenix’s fantastic turn as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. The original music, by Stephen Bruton, Ryan Bingham, and legendary producer T-Bone Burnett—who also provided the Cash biopic’s somber plucking and strumming—really does stand on its own alongside classics by Townes Van Zandt and Waylon Jennings, achieving an authenticity that’s rarely heard in written-for-the-movie-type songs. Crazy Heart is the real deal, you might say, and first time director Scott Cooper—himself a consummate country music lover—has a strong handle on the intertwining of sorrow and joy that makes the genre so vastly appealing. As Bad sings, “It’s funny how fallin’ feels like flyin’, for a little while.”

Crazy Heart Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For as broke down and beat up as Bad Blake is, his redemption story sure as hell looks good on Blu- ray, with a well-attributed 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's framed in a svelte 2.35:1 aspect ratio (slightly trimmed from the theatrical 2.39:1). Barry Markowitz' cinematography is drenched in sunlight, swept with dusty hues, and covered by big cloud-filled skies, a palette that'll likely remind some viewers of Wim Wender's Paris, Texas. The color here is ever so slightly stylized, with a creamy yellowish cast in the highlights, bold primaries, and rich neutrals. Blue jean and sky blues are especially vibrant, and skin tones are warm and natural—a bit on the tan-to-orange side occasionally, but appropriate. Contrast is gently pushed to give the image extra verve, and while there's some negligible crush during some of the nighttime sequences—particularly at Tommy's amphitheater concert—black levels are tight, allowing for a few scenes, like the fishing trip, with genuinely impressive depth and presence. Clarity is pretty consistent throughout the film, not tack- sharp but more than adequately crisp, with fine detail apparent in the threading of Bad's denim shirt and resolved textures on faces and props. Grain is thin and welcoming, and the film sits nicely on a 50 GB disc with no apparent compression artifacts or other issues.

Crazy Heart Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For all the obvious reasons, I kept mentally—and perhaps unfairly—comparing Crazy Heart's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track to the one included in 20th Century Fox's relatively recent release of Walk the Line, a stellar mix that had me smiling, nodding my head, and tapping my toes from start to finish. While I do prefer the audio of the Johnny Cash biopic, taken on its own merits, Crazy Heart's sound is no slouch, though the rear channel usage is spartan and there are some minor balancing issues. First, and most importantly, the music here sounds fantastic, both the "live" numbers and the score. Bad Blake's stage show has terrific range and presence; acoustic guitars sing cleanly, fuzzed out electrics ply overdriven licks, lap steel swells with rich glissando, and bass tones are deep and defined. The music is occasionally bled into the rears, but otherwise there's not much for the surround channels to do but broadcast some extremely quiet ambience. I did have to fiddle with the remote for my receiver every once in awhile, boosting the volume slightly during the quieter, dialogue-driven scenes, and then turning it down again for the musical numbers, but this might be a personal preference. Overall, a workmanlike track, but one that suits the film well. Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering.

Crazy Heart Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Deleted Scenes and Alternate Music Cuts (SD, 28:22)
There are three different music cuts here, along with seven deleted scenes, the most interesting of which shows Bad reuniting with his long lost son.

Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal & Robert Duvall on What Brought Them to Crazy Heart (1080i, 3:02)
Man, how I wish we could've gotten a commentary with these three. Unfortunately, all we get is this extremely brief interview/promo.

Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 1:55)

Crazy Heart Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Crazy Heart's story of failure and redemption may seem a little too familiar to anyone who's seen Tender Mercies, but the tale is definitely worth the retelling, especially in the capable hands of director Scott Cooper and actor Jeff Bridges, who earns every ounce of his Academy Award for Best Actor. While the lack of any substantial bonus features is disappointing—I would've loved a commentary with Bridges and Gyllenhaal—the film features a strong Blu-ray presentation, with finely tuned visuals and a solid lossless audio track. Highly recommended!