True Grit (2010)

Absolutely excellent, everything I expected it to be and the type of movie that I can pop in any time to show fellow Western fans. True Grit takes its namesake seriously as it is a movie about heart, sure the trailers and posters will show the one-eyed Marshall as the focus, but by the end of the movie I saw a whole lot of Grit in all the players involved. The Coen Brothers have done it again, this time the flavor is the American West in all its dusty, crude, reality.

Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is a strong-headed 14 year old girl who leaves home to find a champion to bring her father’s killer to justice. The men she eventually finds are an odd couple, one being a well-spoken, educated, Texas Ranger named LaBouef (Matt Damon) and the other being a weathered, murdering, drunkard, old Marshall by the name of Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). The pair refuses to bring Mattie along despite her urging initially but eventually they all set out on the adventure of her life – to find Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and bring him to justice.

The cinematography puts you right into the old West as there are stretches of rugged, barren land everywhere and in the Native country there are tall trees and huge, clear skies. Lovers of Westerns will recognize the scenery and feel at home with the landscape. Mattie Ross is a delight as a little bully making her own amongst adults and Josh Brolin’s Rooster will have you laughing the entire movie if you have the ears to understand his drunken, Western accent. Truly the comedic relief is so much that I laughed more than I normally do in comedies. The Coen’s figured out how to mix the brutal reality of Western justice (bullets to the chest, bloody knife wounds etc.) with the politeness of civilized discourse during the down times. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld never misses a step as she trades barbs with people 3 times her age and the first half of the movie was a whirlwind of verbal jousting leading to the second half which is pure cowboy storytelling.

All in all, I thought this movie was damn near perfect. Sure there will be some of you who can’t “get” the dialogue and that is a huge issue because True Grit is driven almost entirely by its dialogue. If you can’t get the colorful personality of a gun slinging drunk or a Texas Ranger who tells long-winded tales in an attempt to garner some respect then you will completely miss its brilliance. The make-up, the cinematography, music and those campfire scenes makes this an authentic Western addition. I dare say the late great John Wayne would have given this a thumbs up. Do not see True Grit if it’s shoot outs and high speed horse chases that you’re after, see True Grit if you would like a well thought out story with a realistic premise.

In the end, the only downer to True Grit was the actual realism. You will not get the super ridiculous positivity butterflies when the credits roll, nor will you have that annoyed sense of depression from it all going to hell. True Grit plays out very much like a person at a campfire retelling a legend would tell it – it is what it is, and while not a film to shout out to the mountains for everyone to see, it most definitely is one that needs to be taken seriously as one of the better movies of 2010.