Through the years the brother Coen have managed to create an impressive body of work. It’s an impressive list with movies like Fargo, No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski. They are all very unique films and the brothers manage to put their own unique stamp on them, which makes them stand out from other movies. True Grit is their next movie and is a remake of True Grit made in 1969 starring John Wayne.
I’ve watched the trailer for the original film and it looked really amateurish compared to the new version. True Grit is a western which tells the story of a girl named Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), whose father is murdered. Her goal is to find the killer, capture him and bring him to justice so he can be convicted.
It’s something she can’t do alone and she asks U.S. Marshalls Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) for help. Although they both aren’t really interested in helping her she is very confident about what she wants and she convinces them to help her hunt down her father’s killer.
Jeff Bridges, sporting an eyepatch, is exquisite (another great role after Crazy Heart and The Men Who Stare at Goats) and has a very specific type of charm which makes his character, despite his flaws, very cool and compelling to watch. Hailee Steinfeld however is good to and, despite her age, manages to hold her own against Bridges. She’s definitely an actress that could have a very bright future.
If you are planning to watch this movie for a lot of action then you will be disappointed. The focus of the movie is on the characters and their conversations, set against a beautiful backdrop. There are some action scenes, but they are very short. It’s a movie which you could easily compare with some older movies as things move along a bit slower as you might be used to. It’s not a movie everyone will like because of that.
Something which I really noticed was that the town in which the movie starts was shown differently from how you would normally see a town in a western. Of course it is dusty, but because of the wide streets and the use of the camera it somehow had a very modern feel. If you like westerns then True Grit is a movie which you should see. The brother Coen have proved that it’s a genre which is still very much alive.
Score: 8
One thing the trailer for this movie failed to capture is how funny it actually is. I did feel however slightly disappointed, it’s definitely the Coens’ most straightforward movie of their career and it really didn’t feel like they directed it.
Maybe it was because I was a bit tired when I watched it, but didn’t think it was very funny. I liked the scene where she’s talking to the guy about getting a horse and shooting the bottle bit that was fun, but I don’t recall a lot of other funny moments. The landscape shots reminded me of something like Fargo or No Country…