Justice finds all men, eventually.
Swift shot: “The Dude” is not “The Duke”, but apart from a few scenes where Bridges invokes Billy Bob Thornton’s “Karl”, from Sling Blade – his performance as Cogburn is commendable. Neophyte Hailee Steinfeld owns the Mattie role and is going to be a star to watch, and you may just see her adorned with awards this year. With a decent supporting actor performance out of Matt Damon as Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf, True Grit is definitely worth seeing. Still, Westerns are best viewed on a lazy Saturday at home, so rushing out to see this in theaters isn’t mandatory.
The story on the surface is your basic Wild-West justice plot, Mattie’s pa gets gunned down over an argument, so she seeks justice in a lawless territory where any manner of cretin, varmint and ne’er-do-well pose her with a lethal threat. What isn’t typical is Mattie is merely 14 but has the brain and gumption of a well-seasoned frontiersman. In fact, the movie’s title probably more aptly suits this “little girl”, because she refuses to give up searching for her father’s killer – even when others do decide to quit. Her determination is unbelievable, albeit brave and foolish. (Bravery and stupidity are often close bed fellows).
Mattie is bound to see her father’s killer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) hanged in Arkansas for his crimes. Thing is, Chaney also killed a Texas Senator (and his little dog too), so Ranger LaBouef wants to bring him to Texas to hang. Here is where Mattie’s stubbornness becomes laughable; she wants him to hang for killing her father, but to LaBouef and Cogburn, justice is justice, and dead is dead – plus the Texas bounty is more. Chaney is running with the Pepper gang, led by Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper), and they are a ruthlessly pragmatic bunch of thieves and murderers who Cogburn is familiar with. As the manhunt ensues, we learn more about each character as their pursuit closes in on the gang. Incidentally, Pepper has a small amount of screen time, but does a hell of a job in each scene.
This isn’t an action flick, so the pacing is a bit slow at times, but this film could serve to populate a resurgence of Westerns out of Hollyweird. The Coen brothers style fits nicely into a Western, because they like to implore the use of grime and reality in all their films, the dirt under the nails that can’t be brushed away, dust cakes everything and reminds us that all humans come out of the box with flaws. True Grit is no exception to this formula; the heroes are hard to like, but you can’t help admire them despite their faults.
The Coen brothers deserve an award for authentic dialog too, accurately portraying the pattern of speech used in Arkansas after the War Between the States (That’s the Civil War to you Yankee sunsabitches). You will notice that almost no one speaks with contractions, and at times it will come across as silly, but as with Fargo, the accents, pace and dialect serve to immerse the audience and enhance the enjoyment of the film.
True Grit is a grimy, dirty, chaotic, stoic, tall-tale that most likely would make John Wayne himself happy to see. This was a remake of a 1969 film of the same name, starring Wayne, and it must be said that it is far easier to improve upon something that exists rather than to create a pure concept. So, to that end, I say Bridges did a fine job as Cogburn, but there can be no doubt, the role belongs to The Duke, even if The Dude can’t abide the truth.
