True Grit - Vergeltung

Jeff Bridges gets to put his own spin on the character of Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn, first portrayed by an Oscar-winning John Wayne in the 1969 film adaptation. Rooster is hired by a very plucky 14 year old girl, Mattie Ross (debuting Hailee Steinfeld), who wants to avenge her father. Dad was murdered by the cowardly Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), who made out for Indian territory and who may now be riding with an outlaw, Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper), and his gang. They are joined by a determined Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), who wants to arrest Chaney for a crime committed in the Lone Star state.

This new version of the Charles Portis novel was scripted and directed by the great filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, who treat the material respectfully, even reverently. The dialogue is antiquated, yet quite literate, and it truly comes to life when spoken by this well-chosen cast. The story is straightforward and without filler, the pacing very efficient. Serious at times (and funny at other times), the film never veers too far into melodrama. It hits the ground running, with an older Mattie (Elizabeth Marvel) narrating and giving us the back story of Mr. Ross' killing. Two frequent Coen brothers collaborators work some real magic: cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose widescreen compositions are wonderful, and composer Carter Burwell, whose music is breathtaking.

Bridges completely disappears inside the role of the surly, tough, hard drinking marshal, while Damon gives one of his better performances. Brolin and Pepper don't show up until around the 80 minute mark, but do extremely effective work. As soon as you meet Chaney, you know you loathe him; he's that much of a heel. The strong supporting cast includes Dakin Matthews, Paul Rae, Domhnall Gleeson, and Leon Russom; it's also great to see Jarlath Conroy from George Romeros' "Day of the Dead" as the undertaker. But young Steinfeld leaves the greatest impression, giving us a heroine who is capable, determined, and very mature for her age, a girl who can hold her own dealing with a character like Stonehill (Matthews).

"True Grit" 2010 is sometimes violent (and strikingly so), but is basically just a good, solid example of impassioned storytelling that maintains viewer interest for the better part of two hours.

Eight out of 10.

Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit (2010) is undoubtedly one of the best films I have seen all year. Westerns seemed to have fallen off the wagon in Hollywood these past few decades, but the Coen brothers have truly worked their magic, once again, to resuscitate this genre. In this beautifully constructed Western remake of Henry Hathaway's 1969 version, 14-year-old girl Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) sets out with an eye-for-an-eye attitude to capture Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who has mercilessly killed her father. In order for justice to be served she teams up with Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a man of "true grit" and Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon). True Grit is simple, straightforward (not words one would typically use to describe a Coen Brothers film), but as usual, it's an f-ing masterpiece. What struck me the most about this film was its skillfully crafted ambiance. Everything presented from the costumes to the settings to the dialogue— I felt completely immersed in the narrative. Thanks to cinematographer Roger Deakins for that visual thrill-ride! It's pretty apparent that Jeff Bridges had some major shoes to fill in his role originally played by John Wayne. It's safe to say it was a job well done. His style was completely powerful in this unforgettable performance. Every step he takes or word he speaks is done with thought. If there was an Oscar for 'baddest ass' Jeff Bridges would clearly hold the title, hands down. I was also quite impressed with Hailee Steinfeld's performance. As a newcomer to the Hollywood scene, she makes it pretty clear she means business. Even next to Damon, Bridges, and Brolin, she holds an extremely professional and talented composure. This is most definitely not the last time we will see her on the silver screen.

I wasn't sure how to take the news that the Coen brothers were remaking the John Wayne film True Grit and I remained unsure even when it was clear that they were not so much remaking the film as making a different version of the original book. How would their humour and oddity sit in this story, how would their normal arch cynicism and cleverness work here? Well in reality it doesn't really come into play because they have made a film that is surprisingly free of that side of their work while also containing just enough in terms of characters and dialogue to make it their own. Mostly though what True Grit does is deliver an enjoyable story in an engaging and satisfying manner.

While I don't agree with IMDb observer-in-chief tedg's overall rating for the film, he is correct when he says that the western as a genre has really been thoroughly explored and it is hard to bring freshness to such a film. The Cohen's struggle with this a little bit because it doesn't feel like "their take" on a genre so much as it does just feel like a western full stop. This perhaps limits them in terms of their own style but it does mean that they are focused on the telling of the story rather than anything else they may have added for colour. The end result of this is that the film is actually a really solidly told story that perhaps doesn't soar or have flamboyance or colourful touches but it does still engage as a tale. The story will be known to those familiar with the Wayne film but the slant very much onto Mattie makes it feel like a different story, albeit with much familiar about it. It is well told though and I found myself engaged by it just as much as I was never really thrilled by it. It has heart in its main character, it has a forward motion and it has a nice touch of humour throughout.

The key to it is the performance from Steinfeld. She may well have been put forward for Supporting Actress in a political move by the studio but she is the heart and soul of this film. Her performance makes her Mattie a stubborn youth but one with juts enough vulnerability about her to suggest some of it is a front to cover herself in this regard. While she never struck me as a person that would exist within this story, she did convince me as a character and she was a delight to watch – this is her story and she makes it such. This puts Bridges in the supporting role and he is great there, having fun with the role and adding colour to things. Damon underplays wisely – sparking nicely off Bridges but letting these two having the light. Brolin, Pepper and others all deliver solid turns without stealing anything. Perhaps aware of what the genre is best known for (the landscapes) Deakins is restrained; where he made art with Jesse James, here he focuses on the smaller moments – the light from a campfire, the falling of snow – and he captures them excellently. At some point he will win his Oscar – maybe this is it but certainly his body of work cries out for it.

True Grit is not quite the brilliant piece of work that the "for your consideration" campaign would have you believe but it is a great piece of storytelling. The Coen brothers deliver some fine dialogue and colour but leave the telling free of cynicism or snideness (not a word, but you know what I mean). The story engaged me and is only made better by the strong pair of performances in the lead – but particularly Steinfeld, who makes this film in the same way that Portman made Black Swan this year.

Let's get the comparisons with Henry Hathaway's version of the Charles Portis novel out of the way. The Coen Brothers certainly knew that, however much they want to 'go back to the source material,' their film would play against Hathaway's version.

The Hathaway version, while tampering with details from the Portis original, remains strikingly true to its story and theme. This is most clear in the dialog - the decision not to tamper with Portis' language was decisive for the making of that film. The Coens' tampering with the novel is more subtle than Hathaway's film, but no less an interpretation.

Approaching the characters and composition of the Coens' version without reference to the Hathaway film apparently proved impossible. For instance, the shoot-out at the dug-out cabin was re-written for a night-scene, but the camera angles remain pretty much the high-elevation shots Lucien Ballard provided Hathaway, inter-cut with full body shots of people getting wounded and horses running (etc.)also similar to Ballard's.

Two performance stand out as striking examples of reference to the original film. Dakin Matthews seems to struggle mightily not to recreate Strother Martin's interpretation of the horse-trader Stonehill - and fails. Apparently Martin had the character down pat and there's nothing but to reproduce his interpretation. Far more to the point is Barry Pepper's interpretation of the desperate outlaw chief, Ned Pepper - it is pure Robert Duvall. Pepper can only match Duvall's self-aware determination - and he does - but he can't surpass it; nor can he find another interpretation to set off against Duvall's.

As for the Coens' own re-interpretation of the Portis novel, what was most noticeable to me were the minor points simply dropped out of the story telling. The most irritating to me were a pair of lapses that are interconnected and combine to make an important point about the characters. 1. We never get to see Mattie tell Rooster that Chaney has linked up with Ned Pepper (later Rooster does remark the fact, but how did he learn of it?); 2 We don't get to hear Rooster's remarking how he shot Pepper through the upper lip (because he was aiming at the lower lip). These two incidents combine to let the audience know that Cogburn's hidden agenda on the Chaney hunt is really Ned Pepper, he and Pepper have something of a feud going on - which information fills out the background detail for their final shoot-out. Except here we don't have that connection.

Finally, the whole Mattie - Rooster issue: many critics are saying that Mattie is more at the center here than in the Hathaway picture, which focused attention on John Wayne's Cogburn. Not true. When we add up screen time and lines of dialog, we discover that Mattie not only has as much time and dialog in the Hathaway film but it is in much the same proportion to Cogburn's as in this one. If most remember the Hathaway film as a 'John Wayne film,' that is due simply to Wayne's bravura performance.

Well, enough of the comparisons. Does the Coens' version measure up as film worth seeing on its own accord? Yes; we are presented here with a beautiful, frightening, amusing piece of 'Americana.' There are scenes approaching dream-like states, as in the meeting with the bear-man, and during Rooster's desperate drive to get Mattie to a doctor. Hailee Steinfeld is quite engaging, and Matt Damon develops an intriguing complexity that makes one wish he had more screen-time. Bridges' performance is the most problematic - Bridges plays Cogburn as a a kind of whimsical brute - as he rambles on with his life-story on the trail, we get the gnawing sense that, if we were not along for a dangerous manhunt and dependent on his abilities as a master man-hunter, Cogburn would be someone we would not like to know. This develops a distance between the audience and Cogburn that is actually rather on par for the Coens - there are no 'heros' in the Coen universe.

Perhaps that's a good thing here. Mattie in her experiences with the wild men of the old west has encountered something larger than her life on the farm could ever get her. These are men who make their own laws and are not bound to statutory codes or biblical decrees, and adapt their own law to the wilds of the frontier that surrounds them. Mattie is a confirmed church-goer with a good lawyer, and if she weren't so determined on her revenge, she would actually be impossibly small-minded and dull. This is a subtext to the novel that both films attempt to convey, but neither quite captures, because it's difficult for any film maker to admit that the central character of the story is the least interesting.

The age of such wild-men has passed. It is not that wild-men do not exist - wild-men show up quite frequently in Coen Brothers' films in contemporary settings - but now they are corrupted by moving outside the law and outside the commonplace, they grow sick and psychopathic. The killer in "Fargo" feeding the partner he's killed to a wood-chipper is as wild as one could get, but he is no longer larger than life, and evokes only the sickness at the heart of modernity, not any adaptation one would want to live with.

We look back at historical moments like those of the Old West because anything seemed possible to them, whereas very little is possible for us. But that might simply be a wishful delusion - and the Coens' clear suspicion that it is really determines the limits of what they accomplish here. They don't present the West as 'it really was,' nor do they present what we want from it, rather they present a disappointment with it. Rooster Cogburn is indeed 'larger than life,' but we wouldn't want to spend any more time with him than we do.

The least "Coen" of all of the Coens films is also one of their finest. It has a few Coen inflections to it (Damon's twang of a voice, a few random mustached characters crossing paths with our heroes) but for the most part it's a lot more straight forward and less humored. Surprisingly this doesn't detract from the film at all, which is a riveting character journey in classic old school Hollywood fashion. And while generally "old school Hollywood fashion" would be something I would cringe and run away from, the Coens make it enjoyable, emotional and breathtaking. The technical qualities are all astounding; fantastic costumes, a beautiful score and some of the most exquisite cinematography I have ever seen, courtesy of the always reliable Roger Deakins. It's such an entertaining film, with some emotional power that resonates afterwards. There's a lot of twists that I didn't see it taking and none of the characters ended up being what I initially expected them to be. There's a real lack of obvious arcs for these people and that was a nice surprise. The Coens do what they can to avoid Hollywood conventions in what is, at it's core, a very Hollywood film.

Above all else, the film is a character piece and what a wonderful one it is. Unsurprisingly, these people are written very intelligently, given lots of depth and room to grow and surprise. There's a constant battle over what grit truly means and over the course of the film the balance shifts back and forth over which of the three has the truest grit. From the very opening, we see that Mattie Ross has a whole mess of it, this headstrong girl who won't back down to anyone, despite her small stature. Hailee Steinfeld is remarkable here, an actor with talent well beyond her years. She's entirely convincing, taking a character that could have been this annoying little brat and making her simultaneously strong, whip smart, endearing and adorable. I enjoyed watching her in every second. Jeff Bridges was different than I had expected, but I love his arc throughout the film. Maddie goes to him because she believes he has the most grit of all and that he is the right choice for her, but as the journey goes on she doubts her decision and Rooster Cogburn plays with our perception of him quite a few times. Bridges was my least favorite of the three, performance-wise, but that's not a huge slant given how highly I thought of the other two. Matt Damon gets arguably the most interesting role, a character who is detestable when we first meet him and then has the large task of making us realize that he just may have the truest grit of all. LaBoeuf is a silly man who thinks too highly of himself, but as the film progresses it becomes very hard not to care for him. He's a good man at his heart, as are Maddie and Rooster, and it makes it easy to root for all three of them to come out of this alright.

This is a film that I enjoyed even more than I thought I would, a Coen film in the most un-Coen of ways (which was a nice change of pace given that their previous effort, A Serious Man, is probably the most Coen film out there). I enjoyed living with these characters very much and wish that there had been more time to just be with them on their journey. The final confrontation with the men they are hunting is turns suspenseful, surprising and a little too short-lived. I didn't much care for the epilogue, but with the wildly entertaining journey that came before it, I can't fault the film that strongly for it. It's a real cinematic piece, surprisingly Hollywood for the Coens, but it doesn't fall into a lot of the traps that it could have. In fact, it does the opposite, jumping into holes where it could become clichéd and sentimental and then digging it's way out, surprising at every turn. I like that the story doesn't quite end after the basic plot is resolved, because it's not about hunting down the man that killed Maddie's father and hoping to bring him to justice. It's about so much more. It's about these characters and finding out who they really are when it all comes down to it.