Coen’s True Grit a Sturdy Western Adventure
Based on the admired novel by Charles Portis, True Grit is an old-school Western told with toughness and determination and is sparked with moments of bleak humor, rough beauty and a rugged form of crisp, clean storytelling whose frankness of style and dialogue is timeless. Made into a movie in 1969 by director Henry Hathaway and featuring an iconic, Oscar-winning performance by John Wayne, this a classic American fable, and as such it is easy to see what drew Joel and Ethan Coen to want to craft their own cinematic version of it.
Hailee Steinfeld and Jeff Bridges in True Grit © Paramount Pictures
The story is simple. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a headstrong 14-year-old with a head for business and shrewd mind for negotiating, hires notorious U.S. Marshall Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and arrest him for the murder of her father. They are assisted by neophyte Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), and although none of them get along all that well his assistance could be vital considering the man their hunting has hooked himself up with “Lucky” Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper) and his nefarious band of cutthroats.
The Coens have crafted an immaculate Western. Beautifully photographed by the always great Roger Deakins (The Reader, A Serious Man), superbly scored by Carter Burwell (The Kids are All Right) and featuring stunningly frigid production design Jess Gonchor (Fair Game) few films look as amazing as this one does. Nothing is out of place. Nothing is artificial, every beat, every nuance and every moment feeling as if it were taking place within the era the story is set.
Much like the Hathaway version, the Coens have also retained pretty much all of Portis’ plain-spoken dialogue. Listening to the characters speak is part of the charm, hearing Mattie, Rooster, LaBoeuf and all the rest converse an operatically charming symphony of language that tickled my eardrums. I couldn’t get enough of it, and as a huge fan of the 1969 film I was more than a bit surprised by just how much this take on the novel was keeping me so happily entertained.
Yet for all the Coen’s talk about being more faithful to the source material (they are) and keeping things more simplistically austere (they do), I have to say I’m not quite willing to call this one any sort of masterpiece. It’s a good movie, full of life and energy keeping me emotionally invested all the way from start to finish but it isn’t any more than that, the brothers crafting a sturdy Western the likes of which Sturges, Ford and even Hathaway would have been more than happy to have called their own.
But that’s it. There isn’t anything additional to that. More, the signature moments, the open meadow shootout between Cogburn and Pepper, Mattie’s riverbed face-to-face encounter with Chaney, a tense sequence in a secluded shack with two dangerous men trying to hide the truth, all of them are staged pretty much the same as the 1969 version. Sure the bombast has been turned down and the aggressiveness turned up a few notches, but that still doesn’t mean they’ve changed in sort of great detail.
I feel like I’m complaining about the movie when I really don’t want to be. I enjoyed this take on True Grit quite a bit. Bridges makes Cogburn his own, Damon is a real upgrade from Glen Campbell as LaBoeuf and Brolin seems to be having a blast living within the skin of the cowardly Chaney. As for newcomer Steinfeld, she’s just fantastic as Mattie, and while her performance didn’t make me forget for a moment Kim Darby’s in the original that doesn’t make her any less wonderful fleshing out the role for herself.
More than that, the Coen’s take on the material is much better paced than Hathaway’s, adding signature moments like the discovery of a mysterious, hanged man in the middle of the empty forest the early film skipped altogether yet add much in the way of emotional heft here. There is also a greater emphasis on realism this time around, what ends up getting done with the growing pile of dead bodies a far more shuddering affair.
I will admit that the one place the Coen’s are most true to the source material, the bittersweet and semi-tragic epilogue, is the one place I can actually say without any sort of doubt at all where I prefer the Hathaway version. While the take here is more honest, more emotionally true, there is something about the rousing final image of Wayne in the original that always manages to put a lump in my throat and make me want to stand up and cheer. It’s a false note, true, but it’s one I’ve always been partial to all the same, and while its absence this time around is more than fitting I can’t help but shrug my shoulders and confess I was sad to see it go.
Listen, this new True Grit is a good movie. I had a great time watching it and it is filled with signature moments the Coens should be proud to have brought forth for our consumption. The performances are great and everything looks fantastic, and when it comes out on Blu-ray I’m fairly positive I’ll be adding it to my personal library pretty much immediately. But it isn’t any more than any of those statements would allude to, and while that’s perfectly fine anyone expecting more should prepare for disappointment.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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