The Coen Brothers are probably two most reliable filmmakers working today, but their output during the ’00 was uncharacteristically shakey. Starting the decade off with the fun but flat Intolerable Cruelty and following it up with the inadvisable remake of The Ladykillers that still ranks as a career worst, they nevertheless went on to score a major win with the staggeringly harsh No Country For Old Men that reaped Oscar treasures far less treacherous than a case containing more than two million dollars of drug money.
However, a niggling doubt still lurked in the back of the brain – even after this second Oscar win, was the best years of the Coens behind them? Burn After Reading was, again, huge fun but more than a little muddled (probably by design knowing the infamously esoteric brothers) and A Serious Man was quietly impressive, but when work came out that they were going to open the next decade with a remake of the absurdly iconic Western, True Grit. Remaking a Western is one thing, but to a lot of people, True Grit is the Western and one that earned John Wayne an Oscar to boot. Had the Coens finally bitten off more tobacco than they could chew?
Fourteen year-old Mattie Ross has arrived in Fort Smith, Arkansas to collect the body of her father who was slain by hired hand Tom Chaney. However, Mattie is a young girl who is so exceptionally headstrong, her skull could metaphorically comprised of pure granite and so, after handling some business matters to rustle up some needed funds, Mattie attempts to procure the services of a Deputy U.S. Marshal in order to go after her quarry.
She finds the bloated, drawling Rooster Cogburn, a man who “loves to pull a cork”, but is also notoriously trigger happy – something that will no doubt prove to be expedient considering that Chaney has reportedly fallen in with the Ned Pepper gang.
Falling in with egotistical Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf to pad out their meager ranks, Rooster and Mattie head out into Indian Territory in order to bring their target in.
Of course, while Mattie and Cogburn seem to forge an oddly symbiotic (if tempestuous) relationship, the prickly nature of all involved quickly sees LaBoeuf make his own way, seeing the sozzled marshal and the determined child forge on, encountering ever more dangerous (and stranger) souls on their journey.
However, after getting Chaney in their sights and promptly losing him, they reconnect with an injured LaBoeuf and realise, much to Mattie’s dismay, that further pursuit is futile. But, as fate would have it, a chance run-in with Chaney sees Mattie share the inhospitable company of the gang of Lucky Ned and his gang as their prisoner.
Hardly one to play the wilting damsel, Mattie still has to hope that salvation will present itself in the form of a bloated, eye-patched, Cogburn, but can the level of his grit match his impressive amount of his blood/alcohol levels?
For those who prefer the more classic, saturday morning matinee form of Cowboys & Indians may find this new rendition of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis a bit too much to chew, choosing to hinge its story more on exchanges detailing the deliciously counter-intuitive language that hangs in the air in guttural tones rather than your typical derring do. This, however, is Coen town and more adept purveyors of colourful diction simply do not exist – thus True Grit’s major boon for unusual, sing-song type dialogue brings it nicely in line with Fargo’s good natured, Minnesota twang, Raising Arizona’s hyper verbal bluster or even The Big Lebowski’s clueless rambling. I could fill the whole review with studies of various line readings that hooked my attention that deftly puts you right plumb in the middle of the setting just as much as the mud encrusted duster jackets or the sudden roar of side irons. Why say something a prosaic as “you’re being mean” when “You give very little sugar with your pronouncements.” is so much more evocative and fits in extraordinarily well with the Coen’s, more-is-more approach to causal chatter.
Of course, such meaty words wouldn’t be half as impressive if the mouths uttering them wasn’t up to the task and the siblings rope together a typically great cast to do them justice. Finding someone to fill John Wayne’s boots would be an unenviable task at the best of times, let alone stepping into the role that scored the Duke a gold statue, yet the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, is more than up to the task. Constantly unwashed, permanently shitfaced and wielding a southern drawl so thick you may require subtitles on the first viewing, thus iteration of Cogburn takes Wayne’s portrayal of the aging marshal and roughs up the edges significantly, playing up the fact that Cogburn has a decidedly dishonourable reputation for shooting perps in the back and a sense of pragmatism that borders on brutal (“Ground’s too hard. If them men wanted a descent burrial they should’ve got themselves killed in summer.”). It’s a savvy move, mostly because it separates both Wayne and Bridges’ versions enough that to compare the performances is to compare the very fabric of both movies – but rest assured, Bridges is magnificent, even braying his first lines unseen from from confines of an outhouse.
Elsewhere, Matt Damon is typically reliable as LaBoeuf, playing him as a know it all blowhard, spinning exaggerations and self important, almost ludicrous, boasts (“I have lapped filthy water from a hoof print and I was glad to have it.”) even after his tongue is almost bitten through after a particularly nasty mishap. However, the real find here is Hailee Steinfeld who is spectacularly good, putting in an earnest showing of a strong willed young woman whose idealistic outlook is somehow neither precocious or obnoxious despite weathering the hardship of being born in a time where being young and female was almost as good as being rendered invisible. Watching her verbally maneuvering everyone around her with nothing more than an inability to take no for an answer and an iron-clad sense of what’s right it good enough, but what really resonates is the relationship the emerges almost organically between her and Cogburn – watch how she naturally starts rolling his cigarettes in an almost motherly fashion the very moment they meet.
On top of the almost play-like staging and some injections of pure, uncut, Coen-levels of weird (the deep voiced, bear-skin wearing dentist may have nothing to do with anything, but he’s still an utter joy), the film also carries moments of tenderness and tragedy that gives extra weight to the more familiar moments of reins biting and lamentations of advancing age.
The remake game hasn’t always been kind to the Coens, but the siblings manage to wipe away any upsetting memories by planting their recognisable flag in one of the most recognizable of Westerns.
Fill your hand indeed, you son of a bitch.
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