True Grit

[Paul]

I went and saw True Grit last night (at last a non 3D movie!!) It is only showing at selected Cinemas and mainly at the art house cinemas so this should tell you that it is not a main stream movie and so will not be everyone’s cup of tea.

This is the latest movie by the coen brothers, I have heard it is a remake but I haven’t check if that is true or not, I do know this is a movie adaptation of a novel. Anyway for those of you who do not know the coen brothers, they are a bunch of movie making geniuses. From comedies like Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski to drama/thrillers like No Country for Old Men, when you watch their movies you know you are not going to see normal Hollywood trash.

They have however made a few movies like Burn After Reading and Intolerable Cruelty that I did not enjoy and thought they missed the mark, so they are not perfect. So the following review is ironically in my opinion pretty objective and not a fan boy review.

Plot

The basic story is not a ground break there have been movies before and there will be more movies in the further that follow a similar story. It revolves around Mattie Ross, she is the 14 year old daughter of a cotton farmer who was killed by a hired hand, Tom Chaney, that was helping him transport some “ponies” back to their farm from what appears to be another county. She comes to a smallish town to recover her father’s body and then hire a Marshall to track down the killer and bring him back for justice (no one in the town is particularly upset about the killing, it is the wild west).

After enquiring about who the best person for the job would be, she eventually hires (without his agreement at first) U.S. Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn played by Jeff Bridge. A Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf (pronounced Le Beef) played by Matt Damon, decides to tag along because he also has an interest in Chaney.

So the three set off find Chaney and the movie basically follows the “adventure”. Yes a simple revenge plot with (and I don’t think this is a spoiler) no twists or turns other than the fact that it is a 14 year girl and not a Son/Brother/Father looking for revenge

Review
So did I like it? Fucking double A yes I did! You do have to concentrate quite a bit as the dialogue isn’t the colloquial English that we know today. Too follow it you have to pay attention as the words they use, although common, are not used in the same context as we would. I don’t know if it is true representation of how they spoke in this era (Wild West) or if the brothers just thought that it would be cool to write it like that.

The entire movie is basically a series of conversations between two or three people at a time (there are a few where there is a crowd) but they all fit together and progress the overall story nicely. There are a couple of gem one lines that I will be sure to use in my future post (“I do not know this man”).

If you are looking for an action packed western then you will be disappointed although there are a few mildly grizzly death. It is also quite a bit funnier than I thought was going to be but this is mainly due to the honesty of the characters interpretation of events and other people.

So like I said, not a movie for everyone but all coen Brothers fans will not be disappointed. On the Fuck Yeah-o-meter I would give this move a hang-em high 8 out of 10

[J_Th4ng]

ROFL@Cohen Brothers