TRUE GRIT Is an Interesting Exercise That Never Really Turns into a Real Movie
I wanted to love this movie, and not just love it, but LOVE LOVE LOVE it. The pedigree: Joel and Ethan Coen; Jeff Bridges; Matt Damon; a beloved book; the ghost of John Wayne.
But it never adds up to anything more than a couple cool scenes and some funny dialog. Everybody’s acting their little hearts out, especially the young actress who plays the plucky, precocious, indefatigable Mattie Ross. It’s a major performance that heralds good things ahead for this gifted youngster. Matt Damon is also winning as the brave and somewhat buffoonish Texas Ranger. And then there’s Jeff Bridges, playing, well…I don’t know, really.
When it comes to Rooster Cogburn, I never thought I would say this, but John Wayne put his fucking trademark on this role. Jeff Bridges is unarguably a better actor than John Wayne ever was, but Wayne inhabited this role so definitively, that poor Bridges seems like a man pretending to be something he isn’t (which, yes, I know, that’s what an actor does, but the audience should never notice the effort). Wayne is more cussed, more drunk, and warmer in his interpretation of Cogburn than Bridges even attempts. Bridges is funnier, that’s true, but Wayne was Cogburn-ier. I know it’s sort of a film reviewing sin to compare a new work to an older one, but this is the damn role that Wayne won his only Oscar for, and if somebody is going to play a role that another actor made legendary, they’d better bring some serious heat. I just don’t sense it from Bridges, sadly.
In their attempt to make the movie closer to the source novel (which they did), the Coens drained a lot of the fun out of it, and that’s a damn shame. I don’t want to call it a massive disappointment, because there’s a lot of good in the movie, but it’s not one that I’ll ever get an itch to revisit.
You want to know what I do have an itch for, however? The 1969 version. Gimme John Wayne and Kim Darby and some crowd-pleasing horse baloney over this stately and well-intentioned but ultimately pointless style exercise, please.
