REVIEW: True Grit

AS GOOD AS IT GETS

To make a Western and that too a remake of a film that starred the legendary John Wayne takes some courage.  The Coen Brothers—Ethan and Joel—have not just done that with their multiple Oscar nominated True Grit, they have stamped it with their own style and personality. The Coens now have a worldwide fan following, but this has been their most successful film to date.  Is it nostalgia for the Western genre, and the almost forgotten cowboy mythology, or just admiration for whatever the two supertalented brothers do? Whatever.

True Grit, is based on the same Charles Portis' novel that had inspired the 1969 Henry Hathaway movie and won John Wayne his only Oscar; it would be an interesting exercise for film buffs to watch the old and the new back to back, just to see how different generations of filmmakers interpret the same story. Anyway, the odd pair of  Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross is back in the form of Jeff Bridges and the feisty young Hailee Steinfeld, who seems to be headed for stardom.

Mattie is a plucky and persistent 14-year-old, who wants her father’s killer Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) tracked down and killed. She hires the one-eyed, drunk and scruffy bounty hunter Marshal Cogburn (whom she has to drag out from the loo) for the job;  LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), a Texas Ranger joins them in their hunt for his own reasons.  Barry Pepper completes the remarkable cast list as Lucky Ned Pepper, leader of the gang Chaney hangs out with.

It is the Old West in all its glory, a landscape that matches with toughness. The Coen Brothers’ film  is bound to be darker than most Westerns, but is it still lighter than what you’d expect from them, and the dialogue sparkles. The film eschews any ‘cuteness’ that threatens to creep in when the leading lady is a kid and her partner in crime a gruff older man. They do bond, but in a low-key, man to man way.

If it’s possible to do an old-fashioned adventure set in the 19^th century, yet update its sensibility to appeal to today’s audiences,  the Coen Brothers have accomplished it and cinematographer Roger Deakins has shot it with the solemn majesty the landscape and lifestyle deserves.  Even though anyone who has followed the genres and knows its conventions, is drawn into the film with a sense of how the inevitable end will come, and that has a lot to do with having Mattie at the core of the film.  The brave, self-possessed young woman may not be such a rarity in 2011, but she is still not all that often in today’s chick flick territory.