True Grit

Admittedly, I did not originally understand the purpose of a remake of True Grit, thinking the 1969 film that won John Wayne an Oscar was good enough as is. But leave it to the Coen Brothers - a household name for devoted cineastes if there ever was one - to bring something not only something new to the table, but to completely change the story's tone and presentation. Based upon the 1968 Charles Portis novel of the same name, the Coens' True Grit bares the trademark signatures of the brothers' other films and tweaks the western genre as much The Man Who Wasn't There did film noir and Miller's Crossing did the gangster picture.

This new version of the Portis novel - which it is much more so than a remake of Henry Hathaway's original film - falls into the revisionist western category. It is often funny, but equally bleak; occasionally violent and, eventually, moving. 

Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, whose work rivals that of Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone as the year's breakout performance, is Mattie Ross, a no-nonsense, vengeance-driven 14-year-old who has come to the film's nameless western town to take care of her father's burial, track down his murderer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and kill him. 

To do so, she enlists the help of Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges, slurring out of the side of his mouth in a performance that could only be pulled off by the Dude), a quick-to-draw marshal with a questionable past filled with killings, bank robberies and a few rides with notorious Civil War marauder William Quantrill. Also drawn into the chase is Mr. LaBeouf, pronounced "La Beef," a vain, fancy-talkin' (I love his use of the word "remonstrate") Texas ranger portrayed by a mustachioed Matt Damon.

As in much of the Coens' recent work, there is room here for Biblical themes to play out. The brothers' previous film, the brilliant A Serious Man, opened with a quote from Rashi: "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." True Grit goes straight for Proverbs at its opening: "The wicked flee when none pursueth." The film is an old-fashioned tale of bloodletting and prairie justice. Its three characters are all seeking something - redemption, another at the end the end to an obsessive quest or to right an unjust wrong. Each of these figures, despite their occasional buffoonery or the flawed natures of their characters, eventually become figures for whom we care.

The picture is dark, indeed, especially a scene in which Mattie comes across a very evil man, another in which a man adorned in a bear costume is selling the remains of a dead man or a moment during which a corpse is found strung from a tree. But the Coens - who have wrongly been accused in the past of not displaying love for their characters - also include sequences that are more emotional than any in their character, including a late-night ride on a tired horse and a coda with an older Mattie that frames the entire picture in a different light.

It is becoming old hat to proclaim a film by the Coens as one of the year's best. It's becoming an inevitability. The brothers have been making movies for 25 years and, in the past three years, have put out several of their best works. True Grit is another feather in their cap. It is my hope that the film revives the western genre, which has long been due for a comeback and has been creaking along with only the occasional masterpiece (most recently, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). I'd say True Grit is a good start.