Directed by Scott Cooper. Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, James Keane. Fox Searchlight.
Decent Films Ratings
| Overall Recommendability |
?A- |
|---|---|
| Artistic/ Entertainment Value |
? |
| Moral/Spiritual Value (+4/-4) |
? -1+2 |
| Age Appropriateness |
?Adults |
External Ratings
| MPAA | ?R | USCCB | ?NA |
|---|
Content advisory: Recurring obscene, profane and crass language; a couple of brief nonmarital bedroom scenes (no nudity, but one scene is unnecessarily explicit); heavy drinking, drunkenness, vomiting, etc.
Note: This is a preview of the full review of this film. See the full review at NCRegister.com. The full review will appear here at Decent Films on March 26.
A National Catholic Register review
By Steven D. Greydanus
Bad Blake isn’t striking a pose. His life and his music are all of a piece. To my taste and temperament, most country music sounds cliched, but Bad Blake isn’t so much a cliche as the grizzled, world-weary reality behind the cliches.
Bad isn’t a pampered superstar singing about the hardships and struggles of other people. He’s a faded icon in the shadow of slick Nashville idols like his former protege Tommy Sweet; an aging alcoholic whose world consists largely of a battered old pickup truck that is literally named Bessie, a well-kept guitar that is the one thing he cares for meticulously, and endless miles of dusty roads between one two-bit gig in some bar or bowling alley and another. He keeps a plastic jug in his truck so he doesn’t have to stop, and if he has too much to drink before showtime, there’s the garbage pail in the alley.
Is there more to Bad than alcohol, bitterness and a repertoire of familiar songs? Thankfully, yes. In an utterly transparent performance, Jeff Bridges plays Bad as a man resigned to addiction and circumstances but not defined by them. Remnants of charisma, wit, dignity and showmanship still hold this shell of a man together. He isn’t just going through the motions, not quite, when he gets up onstage. Not only is he more than capable of charming a pretty small-town journalist and single mom during an interview in his hotel room, later on he cooks breakfast for her and her two-year-old son Buddy, even enlisting Buddy as his partner in mischief. …
