I saw "True Grit" with four males: all of us comparable in age by a few years, all of us fans of the Coen Brothers, and all of our impressions and expectations untainted by the original filmed rendering of Charles Portis' novel of the same name. John Wayne may have been The Duke, but Jeff Bridges was The Dude, and the latter helped define a generation of slacker tourists swept along by the inexplicable happenings of everyday life. Go figure that the Coens, never content to settle into a niche of predictability, follow up "No Country for Old Men" (itself a subversive, postmodern take on Western genre mythos and archetypes) and "Burn After Reading" (a subversive bit of political-thriller tomfoolery) with a faithful literary adaptation that pits elegant, picturesque settings against raw and shocking violence (the film pushes the boundaries of its PG-13 rating); moments of grace and earnest emotion against sometimes gut-busting humor; and a sense of redemption and maturity against a world where many grown men are still playing a game of "cowboys and Indians," albeit with greater consequences. The Coens have long since proved themselves as two of our finest, most reliable filmmakers, and "True Grit" serves as both an all-encompassing collection of their idiosyncrasies and a story told using the greatest extent of cinematic language (the lush imagery, the grizzled characters, the somber score, the down-to-earth humor) to pull the viewer into a world at least a century removed from where we sit today. The performances are uniformly fantastic (with Hailee Steinfeld gamely straddling the line between potentially precocious brat and mature, intelligent girl). The direction is confident without being pretentious. And the story ebbs and flows with all the consistency of great literature. It may be a redundant sentiment at this point, but "True Grit" could be the Coens' masterpiece (though I feel they're not through with us by a long shot).
Review of True Grit
