From Feb 18th; Lexi Film Club on Weds, Feb 23rd, following the 19:30 screening
“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.”
So begins Charles Portis’ book, True Grit, in the voice of 13 year old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld). Young Mattie vows “an eye for an eye” after the murder of her father by low-down skunk Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She hires the meanest rattlesnake of a US Marshall she can find, one Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), to act as the agent of her vengeance. Cogburn in turn recruits similarly perfidious LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) to help, but their plans to ditch the girl and claim the reward go awry as blood-thirsty Mattie sticks closer than a burr over classic Western terrain, leading – of course – to wild and lawless Choctaw country…
Therein you get the flavour of the piece – part homage, part parody. But by all accounts this is the Coen brothers showing respect for a change: respect for the venerable Western; respect for the cult book on which the film is based; respect even, perhaps, for their own mature film making skills. Whereas so many Coen bros films are distinguished by their tang of cynicism, True Grit radiates affection as it chortles at its own enjoyment of the genre. Boasting a literate script and glorious cinematography, the greatest triumph is the performances. Hailee Steinfeld is a modern American Gothic as blood-thirsty Mattie, and Jeff Bridges brings a nastiness to the role that the Duke in the 1969 original would’ve envied. So, sidle on over to the bar for a shot of red eye, kick those boots off, and hunker down for more fun than a possum shoot!
OSCAR UP-DATES: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Jeff Bridges), Best Supporting Actress (Hailee Steinfeld), Best Adapted Screenplay, + 4 nominations in technical categories
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