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100Jeff Bridges is a virtual certainty to win his first Oscar, after four nominations.
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100Crazy Heart is the real thing, and a real gem.
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100Gyllenhaal is charming and makes unexpected choices in her performance, but this is Bridges' show, and he's as Best Actor-worthy as he's ever been.
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100A small movie perfectly scaled to the big performance at its center.
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100On first viewing, Crazy Heart seemed like a pretty good movie with one great performance. After a second time through, it's sneaking up on the title of my favorite film of the year.
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91Bridges draws us deeply inside Blake’s moment-to-moment heartbreaks. He makes us root for him as we would root for a dear friend. Ultimately, his triumphs become our own.
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It's merely a well-done, adult American movie--that is to say, a rarity.
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90On a par with Bridges' acting, and a sine qua non for Crazy Heart's success, is the excellent music he sings.
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90Crazy Heart gets to you like a good country song--not because it tells you something new, but because it tells it well. It's the singer, not the song.
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90Crazy Heart is blessed with so many marvelous moments, lovely lines and vivid characters.
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88Can’t possibly deserve your close attention. Yet it does, with distilled honky-tonk poetry and generous good humor. It’s one of the year’s best, most deeply felt films.
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88The music is terrific, as it should be in a movie where T Bone Burnett wrote the songs with Stephen Bruton.
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88This performance reminds us that Bridges is that rare actor who has never had to make that apology. Crazy Heart lets him be every bit as grand as we’d hope him to be.
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88A simple story about a difficult man, and it's an impressive debut from writer-director Scott Cooper.
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83Bridges' guileless performance makes this piquant little indie tale of country music, redemption, and the love of a pretty younger woman such a sad-song charmer.
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83Crazy Heart could use more rough edges, but while it’s a little too sentimental and tidy, Bridges’ humane, deeply empathetic lead performance makes it easy to root for one man’s redemption.
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80A phenomenal, heart-breaking performance from Jeff Bridges powers this simple but affecting redemption story.
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80Bridges performance in Crazy Heart, for my money the finest male performance of the year, reels us right back to understanding why: Instead of dressing up words, he sends them out naked. It's everything he subtracts that matters.
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80Ever-youthful in his looks and energy, Bridges now stands as one of Hollywood's great old pros, incapable of making a false move.
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80Robert Duvall, who played a similar character in Bruce Beresford's "Tender Mercies" (1983), turns up in a supporting role.
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78Bridges makes this sozzled and desperate ex-desperado – a cliché by any other name – as fresh and vital as one final shot at cowboy-poet redemption. It may sound crazy, but it's true.
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75Even when you know what's coming, Crazy Heart haunts you like a classic country song. It's a mesmerizer. So is Bad Blake. This dude also abides.
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75Bridges brings his 50 years of acting experience to this one captivating, surprisingly moving performance.
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75Perhaps the idea of watching Jeff Bridges as a drunken, broken-down, down-on-his luck country music singer in Crazy Heart doesn't automatically sound appealing. But think this: "The Wrestler." With good songs.
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75Crazy Heart, based on a 1987 novel by Thomas Cobb, also has great music. Even if you're not a country music fan, the songs, by T Bone Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton, are infectious.
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The virtues of Crazy Heart only begin with Bridges: Music fans will rejoice at the movie's songs.
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75Crazy Heart is the country music version of "The Wrestler": a grizzled veteran whose days in the spotlight are behind him struggles to keep going while seeing the world through a haze of regret and booze.
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75Bridges's big performance takes place in the context of a relatively minor movie.
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75What makes this low-key movie memorable are the pitch-perfect performances.
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70Crazy Heart lacks that spark of originality. So what Fox Searchlight has salvaged essentially is a highly watchable performance by Bridges, one of many he has furnished throughout a long career.
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70It has a gentle, unforced rhythm, and what’s there is good and true. But there’s not enough of it--the movie needs more plot, more complication, more conflict.
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60A manufactured kid-in-jeopardy climax and Blake’s rehab stint blow the mood. Until then, this is great American acting.