True Grit movie review (2011) | Little White Lies

True Grit

10 Feb 2011 / Released: 11 Feb 2011

Words by Adam Woodward

Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

Starring Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, and Matt Damon

Older man with long grey beard, wearing cowboy hat and grey coat, aiming revolver in outdoor setting.
Older man with long grey beard, wearing cowboy hat and grey coat, aiming revolver in outdoor setting.
4

Anticipation.

The Coens saddle up and go west, Dude and Damon in tow.

4

Enjoyment.

Funny, furious, blow-your-socks-off cinema.

3

In Retrospect.

The Coens prove they can do straight-laced genre well, but the result is too safe to rank alongside their best.

New­com­er Hailee Ste­in­feld steals the show from right under Jeff Bridges’ nose in the Coens’ deli­cious­ly salty western.

You must pay for every­thing in this world, one way and anoth­er. There is noth­ing free… Except the grace of God.”

Set­ting out her stall over a soft, melan­cholic piano refrain, Mat­tie Ross clos­es the pro­logue to True Grit with faith in her heart and ven­om on her tongue. On her quest for ret­ri­bu­tion she’ll need to keep both in good stock.

The rhyth­mic chat­ter of train wheels segues gen­tly into chap­ter one, where a young Mat­tie (Hailee Ste­in­feld) watch­ful­ly and some­what anx­ious­ly acknowl­edges her arrived des­ti­na­tion through a front of glass and mettle.

She heads pur­pose­ful­ly to the local funer­al par­lour, where an open cas­ket con­firms her father’s death before for­mal­i­ties give way to mar­ket stall bar­ter­ing. Mat­tie deems the mortician’s self-val­u­a­tion to be too high, but set­tles on the con­di­tion that she will be allowed to bunk among the souls and saw­dust for the night. Wel­come to Coen country.

Long before Lar­ry Gopnik’s self-esteem took a kick in the toches and Norville Barnes rode his wheel to for­tune and back; before the Sog­gy Bot­tom Boys’ big break and even before Bernie Bernbaum’s dou­ble cross­ing, Joel and Ethan Coen take us all the way back to nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Fort Smith, a dusty South­ern kiln run by salty US Mar­shall Roost­er Cog­burn (Jeff Bridges), who bathes in whisky and wres­tles crooks when the mood strikes or, in this case, when the price is right.

For a tidy sum Roost­er agrees to help our lion­heart­ed, pig­tailed hero­ine track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the slip­pery tran­sient who mur­dered her father for two of his Cal­i­for­nia gold pieces. They set out on horse­back into the vast, for­mi­da­ble beyond of the Indi­an Ter­ri­to­ries, joined by LaBoeuf (Matt Damon in a refresh­ing­ly self-effac­ing turn), a mut­ton chop-cheeked, spur-clink­ing Texas Ranger who’s out to set­tle his own score with Chaney.

Bridges is at his surly and love­able best here, ooz­ing mam­malian machis­mo while retain­ing a famil­iar, grand­fa­ther­ly aura. The eye­patch and Stet­son are bor­rowed, but Bridges tames this rough­neckin’ law­man with his own lar­i­at. Cer­tain­ly, the Duke would abide.

But the real star is Ste­in­feld. Hers is a curi­ous char­ac­ter caught up in a time­less tale, but far from being over­whelmed she takes her bigscreen debut in her short stride with a fear­less­ness that bor­ders on naïvety but is absolute­ly bet­ter for it.

At its essence True Grit is pure Amer­i­can fic­tion: its picaresque first-per­son nar­ra­tive proud­ly chan­nels Mark Twain and rev­els in the roman­ti­cised adven­ture of the wild west. It is can­did, direct and dark­ly humoured. At times it loads a sin­gle bul­let into a cham­ber and pis­tol-whips you so that each exhil­a­rat­ing hop is taint­ed by the thought that the next trig­ger click could blow you clean out of your com­fort zone. It is a joy­ous salute to the Coens’ bound­less dynamism and trusty bravura.

So why then – like a scoop of Rooster’s spe­cial recipe beans – does some­thing not quite set­tle right?

This is the broth­ers’ most acces­si­ble film in years, but in their eager­ness to do jus­tice to Charles Por­tis’ nov­el they have obscured their kinet­ic, odd­ball brand of yarn-spin­ning. Not entire­ly, per­haps, but enough to nig­gle. The result is a film that is nev­er less than riv­et­ing, but safer than we’ve come to expect from this most accom­plished and pro­lif­ic film­mak­ing duo.

Indeed, despite being fear­some scribes in their own right, the broth­ers’ cut and paste job of Por­tis’ ornate prose means that while the bristly, quick-fire ral­lies between our three unlike­ly ami­gos are white-hot on impact, the nov­el­ty of the dia­logue fades like scat­tered embers.

Grant­ed, True Grit is sea­soned with the occa­sion­al suck­er punch to remind you of the broth­ers’ sav­age sense of humour and abil­i­ty to deliv­er bewitch­ing char­ac­ter-dri­ven cin­e­ma, but as dec­o­ra­tive rib­bon is looped into a neat bow around the film’s final act, those hop­ing for some vin­tage Coen skull­dug­gery will find them­selves left wanting.

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