The sun was finally making a comeback in Sacto.  My girl and I decided we wanted to see a movie, so we went to the Tower Theater.  First, we walked around the Old Land Park neighborhood to soak up a little sun and outdoors, then went to the movie.

Crazy Heart is a story about a country singer who has come to a point in his life where change is coming, but he doesn't want it, at first.  Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake, and he was once a popular country star, but now he drives his old GMC across the Southwest, playing in bowling alleys and honky tonk bars.  I was at once reminded of a country singer I knew as a kid in Sacramento when I played the drums in my garage that looked out at a gravel road.  This singer was the father of one of our band members, and I admired him since he lived the music and road life.  He taught me a lot about performing music.  Bad Blake also lives the road life, but he downs tequila and bourbon regularly and sometimes has to exit the stage to purge outside in a trash can.  He can sing the cowboy blues, though, and he can write songs that can move you emotionally.

Then comes a young, pretty journalist who writes for the Santa Fe local.  Played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, her name slips my mind now, but the character is a strong presence.  If you can get past the fantasy of a pretty young woman interested in an alcoholic 50 something year old man, she and Jeff Bridges become a couple.  The pretty young journalist has a young boy, and she at first is intersted in interviewing Mr. Bad Blake and learning about his life as a country singer.  The pair drinking whiskey on Bad's motel bed is set on fire by Bad's line "I was just thinking how much you make this room look bad".  The deal is clinched, and forgive the innuendo.

Bad Blake's career is in the shadows, but then a one time protege of his comes along and offers him an appearance at a 12,000 seat theater as an opening act.  First he doesn't want it, but Bad finally goes and takes his grumpy old man who can sing and play act on the stage and the scene is really a burst of life for him.  He and the journalist are in love, and her young boy loves Bad.  Everything seems to be turning around for Bad, and then comes an accident in the high desert when he falls asleep at the wheel, thankfully alone.  Alive but injured, a doctor reveals to us an Bad that he is in bad shape without the injuries, alcoholic, emphysema, and walking a thin line.  Bad knows and conveys this by his attempts to reach into his past and fix things and to reach out in the present and value love and relationships.  But of course, he frumps it up.  Some more scary and tragic events follow, he loses the girl, gets sober, and finds his niche in the music world.  Mr. Blake can take it and get up and give some more.

Jeff Bridges did a great job as Bad Blake, and did his own singing.  Maggie Gyllenhaal is truly magnetic as the pretty young journalist, and Robert Duvall plays Bad's good friend who supports him through the storm.  A great story, with some good music.  I give this movie five looksees out of five.  A looksee is, well, a look and see recommendation.  Playing at the Tower.

Later.