True Grit (2010)

9.15pm, Friday, TG4

“You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements”

The original True Grit (1969) was a fairly ordinary movie, elevated in people’s memories by John Wayne’s scenerychewing, Oscar-winning turn as Reuben ‘Rooster’ Cogburn, a grizzled US Marshall in 1880s Arkansas hired by a young girl, Mattie, to track down the varmint who killed her father. That story unfolded through Rooster’s eyes (or eye, to be more precise, since he sported one of the most famous eye-patches in screen history). The Coens, for their part, have remained more faithful to Henry Portis’ novel and concentrated their e orts on Mattie. It’s a bold move, given that their Rooster is recent Oscar-winner Je Bridges, whose previous outing for the Coens was the cult classic The Big Lebowski (1998), and that a relative unknown would play the 14-year-old heroine. But it’s a move that pays o in spades. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld (who beat out 15,000 hopefuls at an open casting call) is a revelation as the young girl quickly learning to use her wits in a harsh world that is no country for young women. She really shows her chops in a key early scene during which Mattie employs a combination of eloquence and chutzpah to secure enough money from a horse trader to fund her quest for revenge. Steinfeld and Bridges are both marvellous (the latter told MovieGuide that he drew his inspiration from Charles Portis rather than John Wayne) but the Coens have assembled a strong supporting cast including Matt Damon, Barry Pepper, Josh Brolin and in a telling cameo, Domhnall Gleeson, all of who relish the opportunity to spout unsentimental, authentic-sounding frontier dialogue. The Coens have tackled just about every major genre but the spirit of the western permeates so many of their previous lms (notably Fargo and No Country for Old Men) that it comes as no surprise that

True Grit should be such a rewarding experience. True Grit. True gem.