Movie Review: True Grit

True Grit (2010; Adapted and Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen)


Dialogue that crackles like a well-stoked campfire.  Oscar-caliber performances (Jeff Bridges as a crotchety marshal with a deadly shot; Hailee Steinfeld as a smart, plucky 14-year-old determined to see her father's murderer captured and hung; Matt Damon as a drawling yet loquacious Texas Ranger).  Amazing scenery, depicting a stark Arkansas landscape.  These are some of the qualities that make True Grit a truly great western.

The Coen Brothers no doubt put their stamp on this remake of the revered 1969 John Wayne movie.  Their screenplay brims with witty repartee, with the characters firing off more zingers than a drunken, trigger-happy desperado.  Such abundant humor makes the sudden outbreaks of grisly violence (including a cringe-inducing, Blood Simple-esque scene involving a knife and a human hand) that much more jarring.  Whether placing emphasis on the light or the dark, though, True Grit forms a shining example of compelling storytelling.

Just like the heroine Mattie Ross's gun, the film does misfire occasionally.  The villains get very little screen time, a fact that renders the climactic shootout less cathartic than it might have been (Josh Brolin--who plays the killer Tom Chaney--is talked about more than dramatized, and thus cuts a less imposing figure than, say, Javier Bardem as antagonist Anton Chigurh in the Coens' quasi-Western crime drama No Country for Old Men).  Also, the decision to adhere to the original Charles Portis novel perhaps results in an anti-climax that falls flat compared to the rest of the movie.  So this is not quite a perfect movie, but one that the Coens were perfectly suited to make.  And the gruff and scruffy Rooster Cogburn is a role that Jeff Bridges was born (certainly not yesterday) to play.  In short, True Grit is a modern-day classic, one of the best films of 2010, and an indisputable must-see.