I enjoy how the True Grit poster identifies in bold three famous actors, none of whom are the main character of the movie. Three men, one woman. Three well known, high caliber, award winning actors and one complete unknown girl who happens to be the main character. Hailee Steinfeld plays the annoyingly promiscuous and determined 14-year old Mattie Ross in the Coen brothers remake of True Grit, a Western story of one girls revenge and an old man’s revival.
In 1969 the original film adaptation of Charles Portis’s novel, True Grit, won John Wayne an Oscar in 1969. Jeff Bridges plays the John Wayne character of Rooster Cogburn, a hard drinking, gruff but comical, US Marshal that Mattie hires to hunt down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man that killed her father. Matt Damon joins Bridges and Steinfeld as the dandy Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, who is after Chaney for killing a Texas State Senator.
To watch this movie you’d think that Western’s weren’t kind of passe in modern movie making. But how can you not like a movie that makes Matt Damon dress up like Davy Crockett minus the coon skin cap. LaBoeuf takes himself to seriously as a cowboy and Texas ranger, and that is the only way Matt Damon could ever play a cowboy in a serious movie.
Although, this really isn’t a serious movie as much as it is a violent dramedy. The violence and the comedy kind of dot the otherwise serious story, taking you through peaks of extreme violence whose tension is relieved by some quality dry and dark humor.
To see what I mean watch the following clip…
wait wait…I mean this.
Pale Thunder 
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