True Grit homework is a pleasure. I Netflixed the 1969 original with John Wayne on Christmas Eve, then saw the Coen brothers’ remake on Christmas Day. Be sure to catch the new True Grit. But don’t miss the plainer, more sentimental vehicle for which Wayne won his only Oscar.
Based on a 1968 novel by Charles Portis, this is a story of revenge, persistence and honor, told by Mattie Ross, its spitfire heroine. When the dastardly Tom Chaney kills her father and heads for Choctaw territory, Mattie vows to track him down and bring him to justice. To do so, she hires Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn, a legendary and pickled U.S. Marshal of “true grit” known for his ability to get his man. Joining in the effort is LaBoeuf, a stuffy but steadfast Texas Ranger. Theirs is a quixotic, bloody quest through the dangerous West; the cinematography by Roger Deakins, from the daguerrotype cast of the opening to the climactic, color-drenched palette of the ride Rooster provides a badly wounded Mattie, is extraordinary.
So is Mattie herself, played by Hailee Steinfeld, a 14-year-old like the heroine. She’s plucky and cute and tough, matching Cogburn in fiber and teaching LaBoeuf a thing or two about integrity. Steinfeld is expressive and straightforward, a proper, corrective contrast to the hazy, drawling Cogburn and the stiff LaBoeuf. Their interplay is critical, their banter appropriately quaint. One of the key pleasures of this nuanced remake is its literary quality.
Jeff Bridges plays Cogburn, Matt Damon LaBoeuf. Bridges’ persona here is a patinaed variant of Bad Blake, the washed-up country singer of Crazy Heart, Bridges’ 2009 Oscar winner. (It will be good to see Bridges as a romantic, sober lead some day.) Bridges is wonderful; when we first meet him, he’s defending himself in a courtroom against charges that he’s, shall we say, a bit careless with a gun. The camera seems to creep up on him, and he never comes into clear focus. His drawl is lived-in like his clothes.
Damon, meanwhile, is a pompous ass with a meerschaum pipe, fringe jacket and spurs. Where Mattie is out to get Chaney because he killed her father, LaBoeuf is tracking him for killing a Texas senator – and collecting a handsome reward. Like Cogburn, LaBoeuf is inflated; both seem past their prime, like the culture in which they live, too scruffy and heavy for the lean work in which they engage. Mattie, meanwhile, is trim and authoritative, not to mention a hard bargainer: her horse-trading scenes are salty and funny.
In the original, Wayne is gone to seed, emblematic of a disappearing West. He’s a late heir to the cowboy tradition, a kindly man whose carelessness can amount to cruelty. In the Coen brothers version, Bridges can be dismissive – check how he kicks people around at a camp where he gathers information about Chaney, played simian and broad by Josh Brolin – but he’s also canny. Scenes in the brush, particularly one in which Cogburn and Mattie encounter a wild man in a bearskin, remind us we’re in surreal Coen territory. There’s something reassuring about that. As there is about the movie, a rare modern film about character.
In the original, Cogburn goes out with a bang, romantically. In the remake, Mattie, the narrator, broadens the picture with an ironic, wan vision of the West as a sideshow, a resonant coda to a relatively straightforward story.
I can’t wait to read the book.
[Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures]
