I've got beef with the Coen Brothers. I was an ardent supporter in the 90s, saw Fargo opening weekend, saw Lebowski in the theater way before it was a cult phenomenon, and love O Brother Where Art Thou. My favorite Coen movie is probably The Hudsucker Proxy, their first big budget movie and box office failure, sending them back to the indie world.
But I hate No Country For Old Men. 80 minutes spent following Josh Brolin and we don't see him get killed. Numerous people tell me there's some literary genius behind it, but not one has been able to explain that genius. The repeated response is "I need to see it again. I missed something." But that's just it, you didn't miss anything. Then there's Burn After Reading, which is just awful. It's the same bull where the resolution is a conversation between two side characters instead of actually showing us what happens to the principal players. Also, not a single redeemable person in the entire movie. Who am I supposed to root for? Why should I care that awful people do stupid things and die or get caught?
The Brothers partially redeemed themselves with A Serious Man, an effective return to their quirky dark humor and crisp dialog, with an identifiable main character. The ending was a little obnoxious though. Just seemed like they were being cute for the sake of being cute.
Needless to say, I wasn't that psyched for True Grit.
My hesitance was misplaced. True Grit is not really a Coen Brothers movie. Their usual filmmaking tricks are absent. No quirky, off beat humor. No creepy villain with extreme methods. There is humor, but it's organic, the natural humor of an odd situation. One could hear the dialog and think Coen Brothers because it's crisp, inordinately articulate dialog, but that's the only thing giving them away. If they had released the movie without their name attached, I'm not sure I could have identified this as a Coen Bros. movie.
True Grit follows a young girl, Mattie, who must settle family affairs after the murder of her father. She arrives in the town of his murder to arrange for the return of his body, settle the account of the ponies he had purchased, and see to the killing of the man who killed her father. We're talking old west justice.
Mattie deftly handles business transactions, surprising for a girl of 14, and successfully bullies her way into hiring a US Marshall, Rooster Cogburn, to go after her father's killer. What he doesn't know is that she intends to go with him. They proceed into the wilderness, which is still Indian territory, hoping to find the killer. The two are accompanied by LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger who they mock repeatedly and who is after the same man.
The best part of the movie is Mattie, played by Hailee Steinfeld. She's incredible. Completely believable and delivers tough dialog without a hitch. Bridges, playing Cogburn, is a different matter. I can't decide if he's believable, or just sounds silly. Early on, it was the latter. As the movie got into the second and third act, his funny accent didn't seem as unnatural. It may just be something you need to get used to.
I still can't believe True Grit has a PG-13 rating and The King's Speech is an R. Half a man's hand gets cut off before another person is shot in the face. King's Speech utters "fuck" a few times. Does that make sense to anyone?
Overall, very good movie, and I'll never see it again. Not a western fan.
First Viewing: 3+3+3+2+2 = 13