John Wayne won his first and only Academy Award for his portrayal of Marshall “Rooster” Cogburn in the 1969 motion picture True Grit. This film, adapted for the screen from the 1968 Charles Portis novel of the same name, would become one of John Wayne’s most iconic films and the only one that he ever made a sequel to. For Western fans, and John Wayne fans in particular, True Grit is one of the greats and should have never be remade.
In 2010 when I first heard that there was a remake of True Grit in production, that was my opinion as well. I was very familiar with the original film and held it close to my heart as one of the great Westerns. But I also saw the flaws. Glen Campbell is no actor and is just serviceable in it. John Wayne is still just John Wayne and really got his Oscar for his lifetime achievements as an actor and not just for his performance here. I didn’t want a remake, but I could see areas that could be improved. My interest was piqued, though, when I heard that the directors making this remake were Joel and Ethan Coen, two men whose work I greatly admired. I found the audiobook to Portis’ novel and listened to it in preparation and found that it was basically the movie as is with just a few minor changes. The Coens insisted that what they were doing was readapting the novel, not remaking the 1969 film. I would argue that it amounts to the same thing either way.
The film is about a bounty hunt through Arkansas and the Indian Territory. A man named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) has shot and killed Mr. Ross when the latter tried to intervene between him and another man over a game of cards. After killing Mr. Ross, he fled into the Indian country and is assumed to be held up with Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper) and his gang, out of the jurisdiction of the local law. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), the daughter of the deceased, arrives in the town of Fort Smith, where he was killed, to see her father properly buried, to wrap up his business, and to hire a marshal to track down Chaney and see to it that he hangs for the murder. Her main condition for this bounty is that she comes along to see the work done.
Her inquiries lead her to Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a hard-edged man who is known to drink but is fearless and callous. He is identified as a man with real grit, pitiless, and willing to gun down a criminal with little thought. In fact, when Mattie first sees him, he is on trial for gunning down several criminals, perhaps unnecessarily. Mattie hires him for the job but has to contend with his unwillingness to take her along at first as well as a Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), who is also after Chaney. LaBoeuf wants Chaney for the murder of a Texas senator and needs to bring him back to that state to collect the reward. This is unsatisfactory for Mattie, who wants to see Chaney hang herself for her father’s murder and not for the Senator’s. The remainder of the film is their time in Indian territory in pursuit of Chaney.
One of the biggest differences between the two films is the tone. There are numerous quirky moments in the 2010 film that were not present in 1969. This includes Mattie Ross bunking up with Grandma Turner at the boarding house, the treatment of the Native American at the hanging she witnesses, and the Irish mortician who offers Mattie one last chance to kiss the face of her dead father before sealing up the coffin. These moments, and more, were present in the novel but are mostly excised from the original film. They are also right in line with the Coen Brothers’ sense of humor and fit their oeuvre well. The novel is somewhere in between the two films, both of them picking specific elements that the other left out.
A film like True Grit lives and dies based on the performances, especially Mattie Ross. Kim Darby played her in the 1969 version, and even though she looks younger than she actually was, she still comes across as too old for this role. There is nothing specific that she is doing wrong, but you can feel she is uncomfortable in that film. It didn’t help that she was afraid of horses and is visibly tense whenever she is filmed riding one. In contrast, Hailee Steinfeld was only fourteen when she played Mattie Ross. She looks age-appropriate, and even though she is no-nonsense, there is a callowness to her character that was missing in the earlier picture. You can see a vulnerability to her character that she is trying hard to mask. Hailee would become one of the youngest actresses to ever be nominated for an Academy Award although she was nominated for a supporting role when I would argue she is just as much a lead as Bridges.
Matching her beat for beat is Jeff Bridges, who brings a level of grizzle to the role that is largely lacking in the John Wayne interpretation. He has a vocal delivery that some found hard to understand, but I never did. It’s not quite mumbling but is gruff and has an odd cadence that does require you to pay attention when he is speaking. It’s also filled with little witticisms and some slang that I was unfamiliar with, some of which came from the novel and were so obscure that even Western experts have debated over the actual meaning. Jeff Bridges has ignored what John Wayne did with this role and gone in an entirely different direction, and it works in this film. As much as I like Wayne in the original, Bridges is out-acting him in every way. He, too, would be honored with an Oscar nomination for this.
Beat for beat, there is very little to differentiate the two films, story-wise. This film will not surprise you in that way. What is surprising is how much this film will get you to forget the original and enjoy this one on its own terms. This feels so much more like the legitimate West than the 1969 film, as great as that one was. It’s gritty, sometimes ugly, and there is an uptick in the violence as befitting the times it was made in. But it never crosses the line into R-rated territory. This is no Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, where blood flows like water. Because of this, when it does go violent, it does so to great effect. There is a scene where Rooster and Mattie have two outlaws, Quincy and Moon, secured in a cabin by the river, interrogating them. Quincy stabs Moon to keep him from blabbing about a rendezvous with Lucky Ned and his gang, cutting off the Moon’s fingers and stabbing him in the chest. Rooster responds by shooting Quincy in the face. It’s the most violent scene in the entire picture, and when it happens, there is a beat right afterwards where we, the viewers, are holding our breaths, unable to breathe for a moment in total shock at what just we just saw. We echo Mattie’s reaction, staring wide eyed and with bated breath. No other scene in this entire film is quite as shocking as this one.
One of the biggest changes made in this new film is the fate of Mattie Ross. In both films, she shoots and kills Chaney in the end, but in the new film, she falls into a hole in the ground and is bitten by a rattlesnake. She survives the ordeal but not before losing her arm. This leads us into an epilogue that is the film’s only real misstep. It gives us a view much later in the timeline where an older Mattie attempts to visit Rooster, who has retired from marshaling and works in a traveling exhibition show. But when she arrives, she receives news that he has just died a few days earlier. This scene is unnecessary and unpleasant to boot, showing us that Mattie grew up to be a bitter and angry woman. She was always older than her years and streetwise, but she was never a shrew like she appears in this final scene. Sure, it existed in the original novel but it always felt out of place, even on the page.
Overall, this is a great adaptation of the Charles Portis novel and complements the original film rather than supplanting it. While it is not perfect, it represents the source material well and will appeal to fans of the genre who may not want to go back and see films from the 60s. It’s also beautifully shot, taking more care to avoid terrain foreign to the area of the country it is supposed to be taking place in. One of the biggest gaffs of the original film is all the mountains on screen that don’t exist in Arkansas. The Coens have a reverence for the sprawling countryside, and it shows in every wide shot we see out in the countryside. These vista views are even more impressive on the big screen, where their majesty is practically breathtaking. True Grit is one of only a few films where I can honestly say the remake justifies its existence and absolutely deserves to be seen.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen
Best Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Best Actor: Jeff Bridges
Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld
Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Best Art Direction: Jess Gonchor and Nancy Haigh
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Best Costume Design: Mary Zophres
Best Sound Editing: Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey
Best Sound Mixing: Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, and Peter Kurland
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Release Date: December 22, 2010
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rated PG-13
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and Hailee Steinfeld
Directed By: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
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