power, which undermined his leading man career in busts like Oliver Stone’s Alexander, serves him well here in his role as a nervous realist trying to look out for the ornery old drunk who taught him everything he knows without his ex-boss’s bad karma rubbing off on him.

The fine original music”strong electric guitar country in the mode of Steve Earle“is overseen by old reliable T-Bone Burnett. (The most prominently featured country classic on the soundtrack is Waylon Jennings” awe-inspiring “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?“)

Bridges and Farrell sing well enough. Given the chance, a surprising fraction of famous actors turn out to be good singers (for example, Meryl Streep started singing in her movies as she approached 40), perhaps because high school musicals serve as amovies when they finally get sober turn out to be when they stopped composing great tunes.)

The studio is giving Crazy Heart a big Oscar push not because the film deserves the Best Picture award, but because it just seems about time for Jeff Bridges to finally win his Best Actor Oscar, 38 years after his nomination for The Last Picture Show. Thus, Robert Duvall is on hand in Crazy Heart to play Bridges’s bartender friend, and to remind us that he won an Oscar for a similar role as a country has-been in 1983’s Tender Mercies.

Bridges has enjoyed a long, pleasant, but slightly odd career. The popularity and energy of his father, Lloyd Bridges (who played scuba diver Mike Nelson on Sea Hunt, which I watched each afternoon