Coen brothers remake pays homage to classic Westerns
If there is a Western playing on TV
– on any of the hundred channels we have – given five minutes
alone with the remote, my dad will find it. It doesn’t matter if it
is something he’s seen a million times or if he has it on DVD or
VHS. He will sit and watch it, acting surprised at every move the
good guys and bad guys make on the
screen. So when we saw the first advertisement for
”
True Grit,
”
a remake of a John Wayne movie, he was quick to say he wanted to
see it.
Coen brothers remake pays homage to classic Westerns
If there is a Western playing on TV – on any of the hundred channels we have – given five minutes alone with the remote, my dad will find it. It doesn’t matter if it is something he’s seen a million times or if he has it on DVD or VHS. He will sit and watch it, acting surprised at every move the good guys and bad guys make on the screen. So when we saw the first advertisement for “True Grit,” a remake of a John Wayne movie, he was quick to say he wanted to see it.
Since I am not a fan of Westerns, there were a couple of things that clinched seeing the movie for me. Jeff Bridges took on the role of Rooster Cogburn, the character John Wayne played in the original. Bridges proved that he could play a roughneck in last year’s “Crazy Heart,” so I was looking forward to seeing how he would take on this new role. Matt Damon also had a lead role in the film and I’ve enjoyed his last few turns in such movies such as “Invictus” and “Hereafter.”
The movie was directed and the screenplay adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen. For some people that would be reason enough to see the movie, but I’ve had mixed feelings about Coen brothers movies in the past. I really like some of them, such as “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” which made me laugh uncontrollably in the theater when I first saw it. But I couldn’t even get through “No Country for Old Men,” despite its winning four Oscars, including best picture. The one thing I expected from the movie is that it would be different than a straight remake of the original.
Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is a 14-year-old girl who is out to avenge her father’s death. We know she is 14 because she mentions it a multitude of times as people from the local town look down on her as she tries to settle her father’s affairs and hire someone to go after his killer. It’s the old West, after all, and she asks around for which U.S. Marshal in town is the best for the job. Mattie’s father was killed by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) who skipped town into Indian country before the authorities had a chance to catch him.
Played by Hailee Steinfeld, Mattie is a girl with gumption and she is set on getting her revenge. When a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) wonders into town searching for Tom Chaney because he wants to bring him to justice for killing a Texas state senator, Mattie ignores his offer of help because she wants Chaney to pay for killing her father in her home state of Arkansas. To achieve this, she hires Rooster Cogburn for $100. Jeff Bridges plays the role of the aging, out-of-shape, whisky-drinking marshal with a thick country accent and a quick wit. Though I didn’t think he could look any worse than he did in last year’s “Crazy Heart,” he does look more grizzled as Rooster Cogburn.
Mattie hires Cogburn because he has a reputation for having “true grit,” meaning he doesn’t give up easily and he always gets his man – even when it means bringing in more criminals dead than alive. Cogburn might be rough around the edges, but he does have a soft spot for the teenager who wants to come along on the search.
The movie has all the typical elements of a Western – bad guys who have no redeeming qualities and good guys who only do bad things, like shoot people – because they have to do it to save someone else. The dialogue in the movie is formal, and sounds as though it could have come out of a classic Western, but the Coen brothers bring plenty of humor into the movie. Mattie, Cogburn and LaBoeuf spar verbally as well as the best of Shakespeare’s characters.
Rooster and LaBoeuf team up together against Mattie’s will. They want to work together to capture Chaney so that they can split the reward on his head from Texas. But LaBoeuf is a hard person to put up with, with his long-winded stories and condescending tone. The trio parts ways, with Rooster and Mattie sticking together. But they end up having to work together in the end to get to Chaney and to stay alive.
The movie was well done and the actors are likely to make the list of nominees for various Academy Awards. The Coen brothers succeeded in taking a genre and a movie that was a little on the cheesy side and making it wittier.
Melissa Flores can be reached at mf*****@pi**********.com. She writes a blog at http://melissa-movielines.blogspot.com, where she writes about movies, TV, food and more.
