True Grit (2010)

Let me tell you when Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit captured my imagination.

Early on, young heroine Mattie Ross has outfoxed a town businessman, talking him out of several hundred dollars.  She’s in conversation with him again and she offers a new proposal.  He stops and looks at her with fear in his eyes.  With a slight tremble, he asks, “Are we trading again?”

The actor who plays the trader, Dakin Matthews, isn’t a top-billed guy.  He’s just another character actor in a film that’s loaded with them.  But he and creators Joel and Ethan Coen put so much life into his moments that they pop off the screen.  They told me that nothing in this film is being taken for granted, and that every moment will have something to offer.

Now, let me tell you when True Grit earned my goodwill.  In the 1975 film Rooster Cogburn, John Wayne’s Rooster tells Katherine Hepburn that he rode with Quantrill’s Raiders.  The Raiders, a group of Rebel guerrillas, conducted the massacre in Lawrence, Kansas.  “Over four hours, they pillaged and set fire to the town and murdered most of its male population. Quantrill's men burned to the ground one in four buildings in Lawrence, including all but two businesses. They looted most of the banks and stores, as well. Finally, they killed between 185 and 200 men and boys.”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Massacre)  That information killed that particular film for me, because I couldn’t root for one of Quantrill’s Raiders.  In True Grit, Jeff Bridges’s Rooster tells Matt Damon that he rode with Quantrill, and Damon’s character immediately lays into him about the massacre, disparaging Quantrill as a murderer.  Cogburn’s response:  “That’s a damn lie!”  I loved this touch because it let Rooster off the hook – he must not have been on the Lawrence raid, which gave him the ability to idolize a charismatic leader and stay true to his sense of personal justice.  At last, I could root for this character!

True Grit is full of moments like these, inclusions like these.  Joel and Ethan Coen crafted this film with great care, getting each detail right and absolutely nailing the beats of a tight, three-act, action/comedy/western.  The film is beautifully photographed, perfectly paced, and finely performed.  I loved everything about it.