Movie Review: "True Grit"

With the Coen Brothers's "True Grit", one might expect a deranged departure from the Charles Portis novel or Henry Hathaway's adaptation starring John Wayne. Though the Brothers Coen stamps this leathery western with genuine literary appeal, which I reckon is a genuine punch in the gut from Portis's True Grit.

Hathaway filmed in the grandiose San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado for the 1969 western, whereas the Coen Brothers opted for closer approximation to the novel's settings. That being Santa Fe and Austin, which hold stronger resemblance to the story's Fort Smith setting in western Arkansas.

Fort Smith is home to the US Marshal Service National Museum and as we know Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" is a bonded US Marshall. John Wayne made the role of Rooster Cogburn legendary in 1969, winning his first Oscar for Best Actor. Those are some tough boots to fill, so the Coen Brothers turned to The Dude himself: Jeff Bridges, who won Best Actor for "Crazy Heart" last year.

The role of Rooster Cogburn is not as a far a stretch as it may seem from the Coen Brothers's Dude collaboration with Bridges in "The Big Lebowski". Cogburn, like The Dude, is a washed-up individualist cornered into a haphazard mission of retrieval. Where The Dude loves his White Russians, Cogburn suckles that nectar of the American West: Whiskey.

With a closer adaptation of Portis's True Grit, Bridges is not faced with emulating John Wayne, which would be ridiculous. Bridges captures his own apathetic hero as only he can; gargling the wit of Rooster Cogburn in whiskey wisdom. In fact Bridges doesn't even have to take the lead and can let the story unfold from its true protagonist, Mattie Ross.

The pugnacious Mattie Ross comes to life in a tremendous debut performance from Hailee Steinfeld. The young actress stomps around the Coen Brothers's western landscape with great ease, hoisted delicately on the shoulders of Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper. The ensemble of actors is a paragon of western grit that is comical, but coarse enough that we taste a gunpowder trail from their bulleted dialogue. These cowboys blast a deep mine that swallows Mattie whole and she shines like silver in its recess.

Portis wrote True Grit from the voice of Mattie Ross, but like the false Rocky Mountains that dominated the scenery, John Wayne overshadows the 1969 film. It was a shadow that garnered Wayne an Oscar, but therein is the justification for a Coen Brothers re-adaptation. There is also the literary style of Charles Portis, which often delivered deadpan humor that was lost in John Wayne's charismatic wink.

As Charles McGrath wrote in the New York Times, "The trick of Mr. Portis's books, especially the ones told in the first person, is that they pretend to be serious...They're full of odd events and odd people...Mr. Portis evokes an eccentric, absurd world with a completely straight face." This is not John Wayne's Hollywood land; that legendary man of men standing firmly behind each pious word of western philosophy. Joel and Ethan Coen perfectly inhabit Charles Portis's world, where absurdity wears a brilliant mask of self-seriousness.