What is it with Jeff Bridges successfully playing characters who live with a drink perpetually in hand? He just seems to know how to nail it. If it isn’t The Dude and his omnipresent White Russian, it’s Bad Blake and his glass of whatever whiskey might be good enough at that particular point in time.
Anyway, this one isn’t the kind of land mark movie that’s forging any sort of a new path the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Without giving a whole lot away, it’s a fairly standard redemption type story…and that shouldn’t exactly be a shock to anybody coming in to it. It’s told well and the performances are good, it just doesn’t come at things from some cliche shattering new direction or anything like that. Basically, take The Wrestler and make it about an old country singer (and have no role for Mickey Rourke’s disturbing visage).
Maggie Gyllenhaal is quite good as a small town reporter. Robert Duvall is pretty solid playing a crusty old timer…in other words, basically himself. In one of the stranger casting decisions I’ve seen in some time, Colin Farrell manages to actually do a pretty respectable job of portraying a country singer named Tommy Steel, trying to remain a success while burdened with a name better suited to a gay porn star.
Jeff Bridges, though…he basically steps in to scene one and says “Fuck everyone else, I own this damn movie.” They may as well re-arrange that poster and put Jeff Bridges in big letters, because that’s what anyone who sees this is going to talk about if it’s brought up. And T Bone Burnett manages to once again make a soundtrack out of a style of music I’m not a huge fan of, but that I now want. I’m convinced that man uses some sort of audio voodoo.
Good movie, and Jeff Bridges is the man…if he’s drunk.
