Under the heading “so old it’s new,” let us now consider Crazy Heart.
This movie’s story of a has-been country singer seeking and finding redemption was already quite familiar when Robert Duvall played a similar character in 1983’s Tender Mercies. But in the going-on-30 years since that film won hearts and Oscars, the movie business has gone in a whole other direction. It’s not just that the vast majority of films today rely on special effects to make their points. It’s that, even when they rely on actors more than computers, the stories they tell usually have an at-best nodding acquaintance with recognizable human beings doing recognizably human things. Screwing up relationships. Drinking too much. Doing their work the best they can.
So, it came as kind of a shock when, well into the film, this thought occurred to me: there’s no kind of foolishness in this movie at all. Everybody is acting like people that I know. Instead of the usual crap there is the magnificent wreckage of down-and-out country singer Bad Blake, played of course by Jeff Bridges, who deserves all the praise and Oscar talk that has been bestowed on him.
If you just look at the story, the clichés really do pile up. Bad is an alcoholic who sabotages relationships and his professional life with drunken behavior. Then he meets a good woman who loves him, but needs for him to straighten up and sober himself up. Which he proceeds to do, while reinventing himself as a songwriter in the process.
The clichés do break down at this point, and the movie finally goes in an unpredicatable, but satisfying direction.
Still, the tremendous pleasure the film bestows has little to do with its story. It’s mostly in the performance of Bridges, who mixes pride and emotional need in just the right proportions, and who looks like Waylon Jennings come back to life. And the songs, mostly written by the late Stephen Bruton and the great T-Bone Burnett, are characters in their own right. They add nearly as much emotional weight to the film as Bridges does.
Besides the novelty of its being about the trials and tribulations of a finally rather ordinary person, the movie had another surprise for me as a Houstonian. I hadn’t known that a good bit of the film is set here, if not shot here. (I think there’s just a single establishing shot of the skyline.)
But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised after all. Thomas Cobb, the author of the novel Crazy Heart, wrote the book under the tutelage of Donald Barthelme in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. In a recent interview, Cobb even said that the character of Bad Blake was in large part based on the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Barthelme, who was about Bad Blake’s age when he died of cancer.
It’s a shock to think of the rough-hewn Blake as being inspired by the professionally ironic, jazz-loving postmodernist, but once you’re past the surprise you realize that Cobb was writing an alternative ending to the Barthelme story. Cobb may not have intended this—he published the novel before Barthelme got sick. But watching the fine film made from Cobb’s soulful novel, you can’t help but wish the old master had himself checked into rehab before it was too late. Watching Bad Blake do so gives the great consolation of art; it can correct the mistakes of life.
Movie Review
Crime film LaRoy, Texas is a lightweight-but-enjoyable Fargo clone
If you go by the movies, life in small towns can either be quaint and neighborly, or drudgery where even the smallest change to the daily routine can be cause for excitement. The latter is certainly the case in LaRoy, Texas, where a case of mistaken identity leads to the small Texas town having more crime than it’s seen in its entire existence.
Ray (John Magaro) is a sad-sack character seen as a pushover by the most important people in his life: His former beauty queen wife, Stacy-Lynn (Megan Stevenson), and his brother Junior (Matthew Del Negro), who manages the hardware store where they both work. Early in the film, Ray is shown evidence that Stacy-Lynn might be cheating on him by wannabe private detective Skip (Steve Zahn), bringing even more misery into his life.
While sitting in a parking lot, lamenting his horrible life, one night, Ray is approached by a man with an envelope full of money and a request to kill a man. Although initially taken aback, Ray decides to take the job if only to bring something different and exciting into his life. The real hitman (Dylan Baker) doesn’t take kindly to someone stealing work from him, and Ray soon finds himself in several situations that upend his world completely.
Written and directed by Shane Atkinson, the film is a lightweight but still enjoyable take on a Fargo-esque story. The fact that Ray has three separate elements with which to deal — his cheating wife, the seemingly ever-present Skip, and his inadvertent entry into the world of crime — gives Atkinson different avenues into which to channel the story, which keeps the film from becoming repetitive.
He also upends expectations at multiple points in the film, from the excellent opening scene to the climactic sequence. While some of the characters adhere to storytelling conventions, several take detours that keep the film from relying too much on Texas stereotypes. Ray especially keeps viewers on their toes, as just when it seems he’s becoming predictable, he makes an unanticipated choice.
The film does get bogged down a bit in the middle section after an initial jolt of energy that comes with the set-up of the story. Stacy-Lynn and Junior are both mostly one-note characters whose importance to the plot doesn’t help them much. The real hitman, after making a great first impression, recedes into the background too often. The few times he does pop up make you wish his role called for him to be in more scenes.
Magaro is good casting for this role, as — much like he did in Past Lives — he plays the well-meaning guy who is overshadowed by others in a way that makes you root for him and hate him at the same time. Zahn has the type of face that allows him to easily play the comic relief, but he’s also good in more earnest moments. Baker makes the most of his relatively limited screentime; if only had had more.
LaRoy, Texas doesn’t do enough to be a completely absorbing crime thriller, but with a few good performances and a story that’s familiar but still surprising, it has more highs than lows. With a deadly crime spree the most interesting thing to happen in this small town, it might be worth visiting again.
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LaRoy, Texas is available on demand.