|
 Much
chatter accompanies the release of the Coen brothers’ latest opus, a
remake of the 1969 Western True Grit, first filmed by director Henry
Hathaway and starring, in his only Oscar turn, John Wayne. For many,
the very idea of treading over the Duke’s bones is heresy; even when the
consideration is a film as problematic as True Grit, which was based on
a novel by Charles Portis. The truth is that the earlier film is only
notable for Wayne’s outstanding performance and the dust-blown beauty of
Hathaway’s cinemascope-perfect vistas. The rest of the film suffers
from some truly unfortunate casting, with Glen Campbell not making a
particularly sterling transition from popular singer to actor, and Kim
Darby in an appallingly poor turn, terrifically out of depth and utterly
irritating as the film’s supposed protagonist. Yeah, the Duke’s a big
hurdle to jump over, but if there was ever anyone game, why not the
Coens?
After
a night of violence, we follow as young Mattie Ross, the self-appointed
head of her household comes to town to take care of the effects and
claims left behind by her father, recently shot to death by a petty
criminal. The strong-willed teen might be far from the age of majority,
but she’s got her mind firmly set on two things; making the best
settlement for her family and avenging her old man’s death. Mattie’s
sharp, quicksilver financial dealings leave even the wiliest traders
quaking in their boots and she is wise enough to choose a gunslinger to
help take care of the whole vengeance business. Her choice to track the
killer is the inebriated, old, out of shape U.S. Marshal Reuben Cogburn;
a man who can’t accurately recall how many men he’s killed since bearing
the federal star, but seems to have what Mattie considers “true grit”.
Cogburn considers Mattie’s offer of employment with all the gravity of
one approached by a fresh-faced, small-town teenage girl, but in the end
can’t argue with the money Mattie has in hand. Any thought to handling
things without Mattie are quickly turned aside as Cogburn finds his new
boss is as tenacious as she is shrewd. Even a near-drowning and
subsequent spanking from a Texas Ranger who’s also after the same prey
won’t put the determined young lady in her pappy’s oversized hat off her
goal of delivering the killing blow to her father’s murderer. The wilds
of the lawless West, the uncharted Indian country and the desperadoes
the small righteous group will face might be more than their match.
John
Wayne fans needn’t have worried; after the heart-pounding thrills and
psychological brutality of films like Blood Simple {1984},
Miller’s Crossing {1990} and No Country for Old Men {2007}
the Coens handle True Grit with kid gloves. They vastly improve those
poorer parts of the original film, sticking closer to Portis’ source
material and walking on eggshells around Mr. Reuben J. “Rooster”
Cogburn, wisely allowing the imminently likeable Jeff Bridges to wear a
Duke suit for a while. They also give us a real star-is-born
moment in their discovery of young Hailee Steinfeld, who could only be
an improvement over the preceding Mattie Ross, Kim Darby.
Steinfeld’s Mattie is razor-sharp, tough and steady as an oak, handling
situations no child then or now should ever experience with
preternatural aplomb. Steinfeld does this without making her character
seem artificially hyper-adult. Mattie’s staunch morals and upbringing
allow her to see her journey simply as what needs doing; she’s a
creature of sensibility and the hard knocks of the age. Steinfeld never
loses Mattie’s innocence even in a creepy scene with the Texas Ranger,
La Boeuf, sitting in her hotel room watching her sleep then confessing
his plan to kiss her while she was unconscious. Ew. This is the same
La Boeuf who will later turn the young woman over his knee when he
judges her fancy too outrageous and decides she is in the way of his
getting his man. Matt Damon’s Texas Ranger is a peacock in fringed
buckskin and noisy spurs; a great combination of hubris and buffoonery
and his offhand sparring with both Cogburn and Mattie provide a lot of
the fun of the film. So what about Rooster Cogburn, then? Strangely
enough, I was reminded less of John Wayne watching Bridges’ marshal than
Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou {1965}. This resemblance was
confirmed for me during the scene where the trio are making their way
across another plain and a soused Cogburn sings and teeters precariously
on (and off) his horse, then takes up an unsuccessful shooting
challenge against La Boeuf. The other character that came to mind was
Bridges’ own Oscar-winning creation, Bad Blake from 2009’s Crazy Heart.
So, take Kid Shelleen and sprinkle liberally with Bad Blake and there’s
your new Rooster Cogburn. The Coen’s focus is squarely on Mattie and as
seen through her eyes, Cogburn is at points brave, blustering and sad,
and at the end, her hero.
As is
the way with any good Western, True Grit travels at its own pace,
following its subjects through the untamed wilds and canyons once their
pursuit begins, allowing their actions to demonstrate character
development. True Grit’s issue is in having as gripping a tale to tell
for the time we spend out in those wilds. Once the quarry has been met,
the proceedings become a bit anticlimactic, which is probably exactly
how it would appear to Mattie. Except for a nearly shot-for-shot copy
from the 1969 original of Cogburn’s big shootout with the bad guys,
reins in teeth, both barrels blazing, rarely do the film’s thrills lift
the audience out of first gear. There’s a strange disconnect to the
pacing of the film which breaks up the momentum. The characters all
converse in that very precise, contraction-free speech of the age, which
brought to mind another telling of the Old West. True Grit did less to
fascinate me as a great venture of its own than as a very special (cuss-free)
episode of Deadwood. The Coens being past the generation where good
guys always wore white hats and bad guys wore black inject the brutality
of the world at the time into their film as the HBO series did so ably.
Where Deadwood crackled with electricity through every scene and
subplot, True Grit isn’t quite as lively. The excellent cast is rounded
out by Josh Brolin as the lunkheaded object of Mattie and La Boeuf’s
travails and Barry Pepper as another outlaw who would like nothing more
than for Cogburn’s blindness to affect his other eye, allowing him to
escape. True Grit’s core lies in its screenplay and smart dialog.
Unfortunately, outside of snippets of Cogburn’s regaling Mattie with
stories of his lifetime loves and losses, once the action moves onto
horseback, we lose a lot of the snappy, homespun patter. The visuals
are notable in that they aren’t particularly notable; the Coens opt for
plains that are dreary and unwelcoming as opposed to the sun bleached
mountains and picturesque crags of Hathaway’s work. There are a few
wonderful moments that remind us this is a Coen brothers’ film, like the
spectral appearance of a bear-clad medicine man out of the mists amongst
other quirky supporting roles and a disagreement between a pair of
villains who don’t quite fit hand-in-glove.
Compared to the flaws of the 1969 film, this remake is definitely an
improvement, but compared to the standard of what one has come to expect
from the Coen brothers, there’s not a whole lot here. True Grit is
certainly worth watching for its excellent cast, particularly Hailee
Steinfeld, but one can’t escape that there really should’ve been much
more, or perhaps nothing at all.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
Dec 22nd,
2010
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