CRAZY HEART

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Jeff Bridges's dazzling career has led him to "Crazy Heart," a truly virtuosic tour de force performance as an old-fashioned cowboy singer.

With some damn fine filmmaking courtesy of writer/director Scott Cooper, Bridges plays Bad Blake, an aging, alcoholic, country music troubadour who gets a last chance at love and success.

Rugged Bad leads a lonely lifestyle on the road, driving from motel to motel across the South playing gigs with pick-up bands in dive bars and bowling alleys. An interview with a local Santa Fe reporter, Jean Craddock (brilliantly played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), blossoms into a romance that prompts Bad to move in with Jean and her four-year-old son Buddy.

Bridges is a natural — singing and playing country songs with the sweat of authenticity and the spit of a tipsy factory worker.

Based on Thomas Cobb's novel, "Crazy Heart" is a bookend to Robert Duvall's great 1983 cowboy-singer movie "Tender Mercies." Duvall's presence as Wayne, a bartender and friend to Bad, is a hat tip to that film's influence.

"Crazy Heart" is the best American film of the year. Jeff Bridges smokes — big time.

Rated R. 111 mins.