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Title: True Grit Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, though light on language there is some violence. Recommended for ages 14 and up. |
The Coen Brothers are weird. This I say safely because I defy anyone to tell me otherwise. While many of their movies tend to go on to great public acclaim, they make niche movies at best. “True Grit” is a departure for them in this regard: It’s not only a great western, it’s one that feels mainstream to boot. Something I never thought I’d say with a Coen Brothers film. Course, many people were wondering what they were doing remaking a popular John Wayne film. Well, turns out they weren’t remaking the John Wayne film so much as they were adapting the novel properly this time around. The story is pretty much the same where a young girl (played by newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) hires a bounty hunter to hunt down a lowlife who murdered her father.
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The bounty hunter she finds is Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a man who is usually drunk and slurs his words, but when he gets serious there is no deadlier man to come across. They are accompanied by Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Matt Damon), who wants to catch the criminal for his own purposes but has trouble having a girl follow the men on their job. The killer in question is Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), who comes off as incompetent on the outside but...well, there’s a murderer lurking somewhere deep inside. All this makes for a good movie. But what the Coen’s have done is made this movie with more style and substance then you can shake a rattle at.
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The journey to finding this man is never easy. They have to cross desserts, snow, and snakes. For all they know they may never find him. Rooster is clearly a good bounty hunter but he’s drunk enough that it feels like the biggest advantage to the whole mission is also the biggest weakness. Though the movie has Oscar winning and nominated stars like Bridges, Damon, and Brolin, newcomer Hailee Steinfeld steals the show. That’s mighty impressive considering who her co-stars are. The film avoids feeling quirky and weird, but tells a straightforward story and tells it well. That it feels like “mainstream Coen Brothers” should be beside the point to anyone else watching this.
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“True Grit” is one of those rare crowd pleasers that has substance to it. It’s almost fitting that Jeff Bridges is headlining this movie and “TRON: Legacy” at the same time. Both are genre based crowd pleasers, but notice the difference? While the former has lots of flash but little to look at, this movie has both the flash AND the substance! I’ve always wondered why it seems so hard to make a good western these days. “True Grit” is far from the only western we’ve got in the last few years, but so far it seems like the only one that’s really worth caring about in the long run. I don’t know is that says something about the genre or the people directing it, but “True Grit” shows that it can be done right and all the other movies need to start catching up.
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