True Grit
Cinema Nova, 02/03/2011
Movie #16 for 2011
When I saw Conviction, the cinema was entirely empty cinema because I went to a middle-of-the-day screening the day it opened. I saw True Grit in an entirely empty cinema because I was seeing it about a month after the rest of the known universe.
Cheney (JOSH BROLIN, Milk, No Country for Old Men) is a bad-guy. He's killed Mattie’s (HAILEE STEINFELD) dad and scampered into the Indian Territories to join up with an even badder-guy (BARRY PEPPER, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada). Mattie hires a good bad-guy Marshal (JEFF BRIDGES) to track him down and kill him. A bad good-guy Texas Ranger (MATT DAMON) tags along for the ride with very different motives.
Loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Those Coens can direct and they sure as damn can write. The design was spectacularly good and the performances excellent (it was nice to be reminded so soon after the car-crash of Hereafter that MATT DAMON is actually really great).
There is very, very little that I can complain about - I loved the ending, (the one that got so many folks riled up); I love that the Coen’s take their time - as I’m sure the novel does - to establish the environment; and I love the balance between action and character development.
A well made film is a seriously beautiful thing. And True Grit is that.
