Mr. Bridges, settling into Cooper’s understated script as if he’d written it himself, makes the answer both obvious and a little enigmatic. There is a playboy’s charm and an old-fashioned Southern courtliness half-hidden behind the weariness, the anger at squandered possibilities, the flabby gut and the unkempt beard. This fellow may be bad, but he’s also dignified. Bad’s own songs express this tension, as do other selections on the soundtrack, which help to establish this fictional musician’s place in the actual musical universe. His main connection to the current country scene is Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), a former protégé who has hit the big time and whose support Bad both desperately wants and is sometimes too proud to accept. Tommy is part of a slick new breed that pays respect to the stalwarts of the past, but whose smoothness nonetheless gets under the skin of his sandpapery former mentor. There can never be too many songs about drinking, loving and feeling bad, and there is always room for another version of that old song about the guy who messed it all up and kept on going. Especially when that guy can play the tune as truly and as well as Jeff Bridges." - New York Times.