Jeff Bridges in ‘Crazy Heart’

Nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Actor, Fox Searchlight’s critically acclaimed drama “Crazy Heart” opens exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 and Trinoma) starting on Wednesday, March 3.

The film stars four-time Oscar-nominee Jeff Bridges as the richly comic, semi-tragic romantic anti-hero Bad Blake – a broken-down, hard-living country music singer who’s had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times.

And yet, Bad can’t help but reach for salvation with the help of Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist who discovers the real man behind the musician. As he struggles down the road of redemption, bad learns the hard way just how tough life can be on one man’s crazy heart.

The debut feature of writer-director Scott Cooper, “Crazy Heart” is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb. Like a sly and tender country song, laced with equal parts passion, humor and trouble, “Crazy Heart” is the portrait of a man who has lived hard, fast and recklessly, but still goes after the salvation of love when his heart gets what appears to be one last chance to redeem itself.

Scott Cooper – himself a Southerner steeped in the rollicking legends and bittersweet themes of country music – always saw the outsized lead character Bad Blake as a mirror of the country heroes he grew up idolizing, in spite of their wildly unpredictable love lives and battles with their darker impulses. Bad might indeed have a “bad” streak – he can be as ornery, irresponsible, intoxicated and ridiculous as they come – but he is equally a gifted storyteller, an unsinkable romantic, a soul in need, and a man who finally proves himself willing to chase after redemption when all seems lost.

In many ways, it came naturally to Cooper. “I grew up with this type of music, living in the same type of world that Bad Blake lives in. And being an actor myself, I understood the nature of a performance-driven story. I felt like if I couldn’t do this, having grown up in the South, steeped in country rock, working as an actor, I was in trouble,” he laughs.

“Crazy Heart” is a Fox Searchlight film distributed locally by Warner Bros.