Has True Grit got ‘it’?

TRUE GRIT
DIRECTED BY: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
STARRING: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Brolin, Matt Damon
CERT: 15A
Feels like True Grit has been around forever. I don’t mean the Charles Portis novel from 1968, or the John Wayne film from a year later. I mean this True Grit, by the Coen brothers – a film that’s closer in detail and tone to the book than it is to The Duke’s great old Western.

It was released a few months back in the States and widely acclaimed as one of the great films of 2010 – a reaction that says more about last year’s movies and the desperation of critics to find anything out there remotely resembling quality, than it does about the merits of the Coens’ picture.
Then it began touring the awards circuit, where overkill is always inevitable. Now that it’s arrived on our shores and is already being crowned as one of the great films of 2011, I can’t help but feel we’ve hit some strange bump in time and space and we’re trapped in an eternal loop with mumbling cowboys and the ever-present smell of gun smoke in the air.
So what’s the film itself like, then? It’s a fine film, actually, an entertaining story that’s a tad, well, grittier than the Westerns of Hollywood past. And all the better for it.
But is it worth all the hype and hoopla? Partly. It’s well written, it looks great, the characters are strong and young Hailee Steinfeld’s performance is certainly worthy of all the praise.
Yet, as a whole, it is no more a genuine classic than any of its fellow Oscar nominees. That includes The King’s Speech, which is very admirable but lacks a certain endearing ingredient. Or possibly the problem is that it has one ingredient too many – that overbearing earnestness that shouts out, “Look at us! This is what you call greatness!”
Well, whatever. At least the excellent Colin Firth won’t make a show of himself on Oscar night.
But back to True Grit. Hailee Steinfeld is Mattie, a teenage girl who turns up in a dusty old town and persuades Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to help her track down the killer Tom Chaney (Brolin) and bring him to justice for what he done to her daddy.
They’re joined on the quest by LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger who’s after Chaney for his own reasons. Glen Campbell played the original role and Matt Damon fills his boots here to provide occasional comic relief, the closest thing in this film to the kind of offbeat characters who usually populate the Coens movies.
True Grit isn’t one of those movies, though. It is mostly a straight Western, with the reluctant hero, the wronged damsel and the black-hearted villain never veering far from their long established places, backed up by a supporting cast of dependable and ambiguous characters. Among them is the always-strong Barry Pepper, who’s been quiet in recent years and appears here as gang leader Lucky Ned Pepper, present at the standard climax of every Western worth its salt since time began.
And True Grit’s finale is a fine one. The first one, that is. Looks like the Coen boys went and caught themselves a dose of Lord Of The Rings ending anxiety.
It’s the only note that’s really off here, unless you count the fact that you can’t understand half of what Jeff Bridges says in his mumbly growl. But that could be a character thing, like maybe he lost the ability to talk with the shock of losing the eye.
Otherwise his performance is fine, making a more convincing 19th century frontier lawman than the neat and clean-cut Wayne did back in the day. Damon does a fine job alongside him and the great Josh Brolin is about as mean as any Wild West villain who ever wore the black hat.
It’s young Steinfeld who impresses most, however, as the tough little girl who’s seen too much. It’s likely she’ll be sharing the Oscars stage next week with Natalie Portman. Like Steinfeld, Portman arrived on the scene with a bang when she was 11, in the hitman drama Leon and those of us who reviewed it predicted great things for the little actress. Hailee Steinfeld is another rising star to keep your eye on.
And hey, them Coen lads might be going places too…