By Nigel Powlson

JEFF Bridges fifth Oscar nomination looks set to earn him his first statuette if this season's other major awards are anything to go by.

The Golden Globe and Screen Actors' Guild were almost tripping each other up in the rush to hand Bridges an overdue accolade.

He's certainly perfectly cast as Bad Blake, a fading country music star who, at 57, has been reduced to third rate southern beer joints, rundown motels and local back up bands as he makes his drunken way through the remnants of his life.

Indeed, his life is a country song in motion – a trail of broken hearts, empty beer bottles, and missed opportunities.

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But just as one gig begins to blur into another, life gives him one last chance.

First the musical prodigy he helped turn into a star (an unlikely but surprisingly convincing Colin Farrell) offers him a support gig slot and a helping hand back up the star ladder.

And then single mum Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist looking for the inside story on how bad Blake really is, awakens lost yearnings.

The bitter sweet, self inflicted troubles that seem a prerequisite of a country career are laid bare in writer-director Scott Cooper's film adaptation of Thomas Cobb's novel.

Crazy Heart embraces the country mythology and makes Bad's struggles seem almost heroic.

Which is perhaps why it can accept that an attractive, intelligent woman like Jean should want to take on a pot bellied drunk twice her age with more baggage than a airport conveyor belt.

Audiences may find it more of a struggle to see the big attraction.

The country rock songs from Grammy Award-winning artist T Bone Burnett are also a matter of taste and a bit too many in number for those with an aversion to this kind of Americana.

Which leaves Bridges to stand almost alone as the chief attraction of the movie.

His performance perfectly matches the weary fatalism of the story and he's always been good at acting with a whisky bottle in his hand and a cigarette hanging from his lip (remember The Fabulous Baker Boys?).

This is certainly less of a stretch than Oscar rival Colin Firth's transformation from everyone's favourite Darcy to grief-stricken homosexual in A Single Man.

But Bridges does it with such ease that he's the hot Academy Awards favourite. General wisdom also accepts that it's probably his turn.

CRAZY HEART

CERTIFICATE: 15

RUNNNING TIME: 115 mins

STARTS: Today at Cinema De Lux In Derby; from March 12 at Quad in Derby; from March 26 at the Ritz in Belper.

RATING: 3/5