Rated PG-13: What kind of a western has no high noon showdowns, black-hat bad guys, stage coaches, tumbleweeds, quick draw artists, jailbreaks, wagon trains, saloon brawls, injun fightin’, cowboys on cattle drives or, for that matter, even one single cowboy?
Turns out, a really, really good one. Based on the celebrated 1968 novel by Charles Portis, this new adaptation of “True Grit” by Academy Award winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen (“Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men”) certainly offers meaty helpings of other classic motifs: scoundrels on the run, lawmen on their trail, dusty boots and broad brimmed hats, gallows and gunfire and spurs and all that. But, most notably, like its source material, its strength is in its long game. All these tropish devices very effectively serve a much deeper standard of “wild west” storytelling: the sense of a beautifully hazardous, even feral landscape being slowly overtaken by the vexing rigors of civilization.
On the surface, “True Grit” is an extraordinarily simple setup. A good man is murdered in cold blood, and his young daughter engages a local marshal to retrieve the killer from the wilds of the Choctaw territory into which he’s fled. The scenario, which easily could be played out in the simplest of terms, is here supported by a stable of fully-realized and multifaceted characters, all of whom work as fine studies of the human condition within themselves, as well as broad metaphors for the times in which they function.
Two-fisted, one-eyed marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn is a lumbering, grumbling relic of the old frontier. His efficiency as an agent of the new law is governed mostly by an undomesticated drive for self-preservation, and an apparent record as a vagabond, mercenary, murderer and thief. The fact that he’s on a first name basis with every hooligan, ruffian and lout they meet on the trail is a clear testament to the kind of company he’s used to keeping, and the line between his own character and those he’s tasked with bringing to justice may be just the thickness of the badge he somehow picked up along the way. His introduction, at a trial for the single survivor of one of his recent arrests, demonstrates both a gruff, curmudgeonly nobility, and a clear contempt for the lawyers he faces—they might know their laws, but they know nothing of the facts of frontier life.
Jeff Bridges, fresh off his Oscar win for last year’s “Crazy Heart,” and whose previous collaboration with the Coens produced one of cinema’s most loveable and enduring characters in “The Big Lebowski,” completely submerges himself in the wily old codger, playing Cogburn like an unruly grizzly bear, a man you could easily expect to eat his own holster if he was hungry. It’s a standout performance in a standout career.
If Cogburn is the face of the last vestiges of the untamed outlands, then little Mattie Hayes, who employs the man specifically for his old-world “never say die, say kill” philosophy, is surely a stand in for the trajectory of the budding young nation moving west. Educated, headstrong and annoyingly litigious, she’s straight as a railroad spike and twice as tough. With a tongue like a bullwhip and a fearlessness to match, the girl is a precocious, unstoppable little tyrant. Played with a piercing intelligence by newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, she comes off as a 14-year-old amalgam of Tom Sawyer, Hamlet, Emily Post and Captain Ahab.
Steinfeld’s deliciously assured performance is a brilliant equal to both the sharpness of the character as originally written, and the formidable players (including Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper) with whom she goes toe-to-toe onscreen. If there’s any flaw to her, it’s that it can be hard to believe that anyone like this could exist in the real world. But the blow is tempered by a perfectly believable incredulity on the faces her opposing players.
For all the noise the Coens made before the film’s release that it would be more loyal to the book than director Henry Hathaway’s original 1969 production (which earned John Wayne his only Academy Award for his own barrel-chested turn as Cogburn), it is and it isn’t. Story-wise, they’ve actually made a good number of alterations, effectively tightening the focus on the main relationship between old Cogburn and young Mattie. Though shortening the shrift on a number of otherwise compelling associations in the original, this is in no way a bad thing. The filmmakers have managed to faultlessly capture the novel’s tone, including its adroit balance of situational austerity, environmental severity and incongruous linguistic wit.
It comes as no surprise that the Coens, long known for their ability to put snapping, intelligent dialog into the mouths of all stripes of criminals and fools, have forged a pitch perfect marriage here with Portis’ Old American Shakespeare. The formality of the language comes in direct and often hysterical opposition to the toothless and unwashed faces from which it spills. As unrefined as this population may be, one gets the distinct impression that the King James Bible is never far from hand, and this lends a particular gravity to the proceedings.
It’s been said that civilization can only be defended from barbarians by men with guns, but once you pick up a gun, you become yourself a barbarian. At this point in their careers, having seen and done the things they have, there may be no filmmakers better equipped, nor story better conceived, to explore this paradox than the Coen brothers with “True Grit.” Toss in a cast of actors all at the top of their game, and a seasoned, talented production crew and, despite its conspicuous lack of anyone riding into the sunset, you have as great a Western here as you’ll probably ever track down.

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