Gallows humour and respect
TRUE GRIT Cert. 15 Directors: the Coen brothers
True Grit follows teenager Mattie Ross, a girl determinedly seeking to kill her father’s murderer by hiring gritty lawman Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track him down. Does she want justice, or simply revenge? ‘You must pay for everything in this world’, she figures.
The plot is intense, gripping and very violent, with twists only found in the richest of adventures. Man’s best laid plans never work out; an idea woven into the story and which may have attracted the Coen brothers to adapt it from the novel (which was first filmed in 1969). All of their films are laced with characters’ plans falling apart, and True Grit is no exception.
As she discovers the danger of what she is out to achieve, Mattie’s adventure becomes increasingly violent. At one point a character has to decide whether to have what’s left of his tongue pulled out, having been half bitten off in a fight. The way in which exposure to a harsh world affects the girl is sorely honest, and any film that displays honesty yet doesn’t finish on an entirely cynical note, must have stumbled across some of God’s truth.
