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Should be head of the pack for Best Picture

BY JOE TYRRELL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

MOVIE REVIEW

Like desperadoes taking refuge in an old mission, Joel and Ethan Coen have turned to tradition in "True Grit."

Known for their genre-bending ways, the dynamic duo go straight with their remake of Henry Hathaway's 1969 movie that won an Oscar for John Wayne as that ornery Falstaff, Deputy Marshal Rooster Cogburn.

Times have changed. Now, Jeff Bridges dons the eye-patch, lets out his belt more than a few notches and lets his grizzle grow gray, settling into the role like a frontier drunk into an unwashed union suit. Oh, that is the role.

There are no invidious comparisons here. Wayne won his only Oscar for the earlier movie, but Bridges belongs in this year's race for his portrayal. And this "True Grit," at once more polished and grittier than the previous one, should be at the head of the pack for Best Picture.

Speaking of an earlier time in America, this story began as a serial in "The Saturday Evening Post" by Arkansas native Charles Portis. In that distant era, long before Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Hit-Girl, the idea of a 14-year-old girl going after her father's killer was novel.

It's still good, and in newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, who was 13 when the film was start, the Coens and casting director Jo Edna Boldin struck paydirt. Young Mattie Ross, whose father has been murdered by no-account hired man Tom Chaney, not only sets this plot in motion, she keeps it pressing onward like a trail boss.

Mattie is a part that requires single-minded determination, austere self-control, a still-growing awareness of the ways of the world, and the occasional dry-eyed hint of emotion or humor, Steinfeld handles everything thrown at her.

It helps that Portis' material is a fine match for the Coen brothers' sensibility, by turns alarmed and amused by perfidious humans, but always watching. The opening drops us right into Coen country: a body lies at the foot of the front steps of a large, attractive house, hoofbeats grow louder and a horse and rider flash past and off into the night.

"People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day," an older Mattie says in narration.

Fortunately, this singular character is not alone in her quest for justice/vengeance, and Steinfeld has a fine veteran cast around her. Drawing on the accumulated goodwill of his years of a movie star, Wayne made his Cogburn larger than life, but revealing some of the warts covered up in more sanitized Westerns.

Bridges' Cogburn is precisely as large as life, a rebel bushwhacker turned lawman because the job required a willingness to shoot first and ask few, if any, questions. Otherwise, he admits, he is sleeping in a rope bed in the back of a Chinese store while consuming whatever whiskey comes in range.

Just looking at him, you can practically smell Rooster, and Bridges speaks in a low rumble, as though he woke up with a hangover and a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek. Indifferent at first, he becomes interested As soon as Mattie produces money.

Meanwhile, Mattie has had an unsettling encounter with LaBeouf, played by Matt Damn as a cocky if not entirely efficient Texas Ranger. He has been on the trail of Cheney, whom he knows as Chelmsford, for killing a state senator and his dog. There's a reward waiting in Texas if he brings the murderer there, instead of back to Arkansas.

Fun facts: the federal court in Fort Smith, Ark., the jumping off point for this tale, had jurisdiction over an area the size of New England. Much of that was nominally "Indian Country," soon to be turned into Oklahoma, but already a magnet for every ne'er-do-well fleeing the law.

"Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker presided over the court for 21 years; it's his courtroom where we meet Rooster Cogburn, giving picaresque testimony about his latest killings of presumed miscreants.

Parker still holds records among federal judges for having sentenced 156 men and four women to death and having 79 hanged in Fort Smith. But that was out of 13,490 cases. Parker believed the death penalty was no deterrent, and urged more rehabilitation efforts, but applied the law when required.

Indian Country is where temporary allies Mattie, Rooster and LaBoeuf track Cheney, played by Josh Brolin as no more than an ignorant low-life with no plan from one day to the next — like so many of us.

The Texas and New Mexico locations where this film was shot are not quite Arkansas and Oklahoma, although they are better than the mountains of the original film. But the Coens and director Roger Deakins find plenty of sweeping vistas, starry skies and extra-large snowflakes to create visual poetry.

The pictures are augmented sonically by Carter Burwell's splendid score, and Iris Dement's contribution of fitting songs.

Still, there are some viewers who may prefer the Hollywood spectacle of the original, which applied a layer of sentiment to Portis' unvarnished tale. Aside from Wayne, that movie still provides some particular joys, like Robert Duvall as not entirely bad badman "Lucky" Ned Pepper, whose gang Chaney joins.

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man," is one of the better lines in filmdom, and Duvall delivers it with the proud self-amusement of a man enjoying a Wild West version of The Dozens. In the new version, Barry Pepper does his best to impersonate Duvall.

OTHER MOVIE REVIEWS:

MOVIE REVIEW: ‘True Grit' (Another view)

No teapots, but plenty of ‘Tempest' (trailer and movie review)

‘The Fighter' movie review, trailer

‘Black Swan' film review with trailer

‘The Tourist': Movie review and trailer

Flinty as it is, though, the new "True Grit" presents viewers with a less romanticized view of its characters and its period. With the possible exception of Haley Barbour or Newt Gingrich, pining for the Confederacy, most of the country is adult enough to know that our heroic past kept company with racism, murder and larceny.

"True Grit" nods at all that, but still presents people of courage and fortitude, with their own codes of honor, doing their best to live up to them. And if the most unabashedly heroic character is a horse, well, that rings true as well. The new "True Grit" isn't a great original, but it's a greatish tale.

Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it