Crazy Heart is more than a country tune come to life. This is a transfixing slice-of-life flick that serves up a big piece of country lifestyle. This is a dusty, slow burning character piece where consummate actors just dissolve inside the bodies of their characters. Jeff Bridges is country music legend “Bad Blake,” a chain-smoking, alcoholic, hard-living dude who’s given up on everybody in his life, he included. Fame long gone, he performs from hole-in-the-wall bars to bowling alleys for small change and the embrace of middle-aged groupies in seedy motels. Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aspiring journalist, interviews Blake and the two seem unable to keep their flirtation at bay. She’s prone to making bad decisions, and he’s looking for somebody that will actually care about him as a person. The relationship between these two is starkly realistic, and the actors interact with astoundingly unrestrained intimacy; there isn’t a glimpse, a pivot, or a nuzzle that feels trite. The love-of-good-woman-grants-second-chance plot device may feel overdone, but Crazy Heart is more than the sum of two great performances (and they are great). There’s a heavy, elegiac pall to the movie, where tiny details quiver with insight about Blake’s life. Writer/director Scott Cooper explores the grimy, dismal lifestyle of a man living on the fumes of fame, rethinking his life’s choices and becoming reinvigorated with creative inspiration. Even better, everyone performs their own singing and they are all, without fail, excellent. Who knew that Colin Farrell could be a convincing country music star?

Nate’s Grade: A-