In a recent morning musing, I pondered Jeff Bridges.  Must be a Taurus, I thought.  Too much like me.  

That is not to say that I am the Dude.  Or the Starman.  Or even Bad Blake.  But there's something about Jeff Bridges I get.   He's just ever so slightly off-kilter, his own person.

As it happens, Jeff Bridges isn't a Taurus.  Born in December.  What he is, however, is an actor.  An actor whose time is now.  An actor's actor.

Story goes Crazy Heart was supposed to go direct-to-video, and not even be released in theaters.  Then some critics and some studio people got a whiff of an incredible performance by Bridges, and the film got picked up for theatrical distribution.  It will no doubt earn its star the Best Actor prize at the Academy Awards.

His performance is that good.

Bridges plays Bad Blake, a beaten down country-western singer who haunts bars and lives out of an old dusty Suburban, an alcoholic estranged from any progeny or past lives who's lost most of what he ever had except the ability to perform and write incredible songs. 

There's Maggie Gyllenhaal, the younger, attractive, single mother journalist with the adorable four-year-old boy, who knows better than to get involved with another bad boy, but does against her better judgment.

There's Robert Duvall,  the sidekick older pal who owns a bar (truthfully, I viewed this character as Bad Blake's pal of a father, but others writing about it don't).

There's Colin Farrell, the hip, ponytailed country superstar once mentored by Bad Blake, who now takes most of the stagelight.  And the money.

Cliché times four.

Of four leading roles, Maggie Gyllenhaal's is the weakest and plays most to emotion.   Although her storyline resolution goes against type, much of her performance makes Bad Blake look positively sober.  In my own view, it's far too reactionary a performance to be competing with others for Best Supporting Actress.  Still, casting her was an inspired choice; she plays well off Bridges as the fossil musician still rattling around in dusty bones.

Robert Duvall runs true as the older pal who owns a struggling bar where Bad Blake returns to play, the fishing buddy, the Greek chorus, the nonjudgmental mirror, the voice of reason.  We're happy it's him picking up Blake from rehab when our star finally decides to get sober.

The most interesting casting choice was that of Irish actor Colin Farrell as an American country-western singer.  Tommy Sweet's not just a musician, he's a star.  Bad Blake taught him everything he knows, and Tommy's the first to admit it.  He runs completely against stereotype in being grateful to and supportive of his former mentor who's fallen on hard times.  Most surprisingly, he is convincing as a country star.  As much as I enjoyed the performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as John and June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, I never forgot it was those two actors doing the performing.

In Crazy Heart, Colin Farrell and Jeff Bridges completely dissolved away.  (To achieve a greater degree of realism, their concert footage was shot at a Toby Keith concert in Albuquerque in 2008.)

That takes a particular kind of talent.  Farrell doesn't play to the bad boy we've come to expect.  There are no bad boys here, not even Bad Blake.  There are only bad things, that come from a long well travelled road.

Bridges cuts straight through the film throughout.  Whatever flaws are in the rest of the film, his performance isn't one of them.  

And it will, finally, earn him a golden statue he very much deserves.