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First off, every single person who has posted up to this point in the post is (almost) correct:
- Jeff Bridges does deliver a damn fine performance; I'm stopping short of calling it brilliant, however, because...
- it does seem like he's doing nothing but channeling Kris Kristofferson, who apparently is a legend in the country songwriting community, and for more than just writing country songs (and songs for Janis Joplin)... but that said, this film reminded me just how underappreciated Jeff Bridges is as an actor (Sponge left out one of his best roles, and that was Starman back in 1984)... this guy takes a familiar character and gives him so much charisma and likability that you root for him not to fuck it all up... but when he does, he's so smooth that you easily forgive his faults and transgressions. Believe what they're saying: Bridges really does do some great, possibly-Oscar-stealing work here...
- the movie IS The Wrestler for country music fans; a washed-up entertainer aims for one last go-round with the help of a loving woman... actually, check that, the only real similarity this movie has to The Wrestler is that the lead character is low on life's totem pole... the woman he gets involved with (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is actually a low-level journalist who's just starting out, not a washed-up dancer, and as a whole, the movie seems just fine with simply following Bad Blake around as he falls for this woman and this woman's son and tries to wreck everything with his drinking... there's no big gig that we work toward, unlike the big wrestling match at the end of The Wrestler... in other words, "nothing happens," but that was fine with me...
I'm not a country music fan (I mean, what self-respecting "Hollywood Hipster" is, har har har), but I liked the songs in this movie a lot, particularly the lyrics, a lot of which deal with the usual: having a lot of fun then regretting it, getting into trouble with women, drugs, liquor, etc. The music was cool...
The only problem I had with the movie was that two of the most important people in Bad Blake's life were played by two actors whom I just could not buy as "country" folk: Maggie Gyllenhaal and... Colin Farrell? Yep, Colin plays the big country star who was mentored by Bad Blake and kinda-sorta tries to pay homage to his mentor by letting him open one of his big stadium gigs. I like Colin Farrell as an actor, but he was almost comical here with his shifting country twang. And while you know that Jeff Bridges actually sang his songs, there's never any doubt that Colin didn't sing a word of his (even though he gets credits for singing them... cmon, fam)... and when Maggie, as Jean the aforementioned journalist, mentions that she's from Enid, Oklahoma, I wanted to howl in disbelief. Don't get me wrong, her performance as a single mother with some realistic expectations of and reactions to what Bad Blake does was fine, but she really coulda just said she was from Ohio or some shit, and it would have been more believable...
I didn't have much of a problem with the May-December nature of Bad and Jean's relationship, only because Maggie played Jean as if she knew the ledge and had been through some rough patches as a single mom (even if she didn't have any speeches that suggested it), and like I said, I was pleased that her reactions to Bad (and how his actions affect their relationship) felt realistic...
Again, there will be complaints that "nothing happened," but I was willing to roll with the movie because I was fascinated by Bad Blake... Bridges played him as if he had SERIOUS mileage on him, a man who could probably keep you entertained with stories about his life experiences for days... it's another stellar performance from a man who doesn't get enough award show credit for the many he's had... this might be the year that finally changes.
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