True Grit

Running Time: 1Hr. 50Min.
Release Date: 25 December 2010
Directed By: Joel and Ethan Coen
Dropps: 6/10

Joel and Ethan Coen have been working together since their spectacular 1984 debut Blood Simple. While notorious for making some of the most violent, witty, gritty – and also brilliant – films, they have also had some less-than-stellar releases. With flops like Intolerable Cruelty and The Hudsucker Proxy, a pattern is discernible: when the Coens make family-friendly films, they are sub-par, and True Grit is no exception to that rule.
This remake follows 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld, in her Hollywood premiere) as she seeks out her father’s killer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), with the aid of Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and the self-assured Texas Ranger LaBeouf (Matt Damon). One issue I had with the film was the newly-incorporated religious symbolism that the Coens used, which was not present in the original movie. This laid out the serious tone of the film early on, but served no purpose in the end. The overall tenor of the film was completely somber, yet every character stepped out of themselves and out of their way to be overly (and unnecessarily) comical. On an even more basic level, the audience’s suspension of disbelief in True Grit is relied upon more than once, such as when Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross travel back across an area it took them days to go through in less than a day, the last few miles of the trip completed with Ross in Cogburn’s arms while a bullet is lodged in his shoulder.
But it was not all bad. Rodger Deakins has once again worked his magic on the silver screen; his eye for cinematography is one of the best in modern cinema. And Bridges, along with Steinfeld, perform excellently, though their talents are squandered by a shabby script. Matt Damon is also agreeable, but his speech pattern was perhaps a little too similar to that of Lieutenant Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 hit Inglourious Basterds.
True Grit is largely mediocre. It will inevitably be compared to the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, and will not fare well for the association. It will fall along the wayside, and be forgotten as one of the Coens’ lesser works.

-Dylan Kenyon