Remake of the 1969 film by the Coen brothers, who stay closer to Charles Portis' elegiac 1968 novel. Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross (Steinfeld) is determined to bring Tom Chaney (Brolin), her father's killer, to justice. She teams up with fat, aging, one-eyed, drunken Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) and reward-minded Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Damon) to track Chaney into hostile Indian territory. If Bridges can't eradicate the memory of Oscar-winning John Wayne as Rooster, he more than holds his own with the trigger-happy character itself, and Steinfeld, in her film debut, is a real find as the feisty, revenge-oriented Mattie.
For the sake of full transparency, I want to start this review by revealing that I've never seen the John Wayne version of True Grit nor have I read the novel by Charles Portis. I've come to the Coen Brothers take on True Grit with a completely open mind, and ...Read More