Coen Brothers Are Back in Top Form With True Grit

With the Coen Bros., it's hit or miss, and I'm happy to say their latest effort, "True Grit," is a hit.  Starring Hailee Steinfeld as a 14-year-old girl out to capture her father's killer, and Jeff Bridges as "Rooster" Cogburn, the drunken (what else?) U.S. Marshall she pays to bounty hunt for her, the movie is full of wit and moxie (moxie=spunk you aren't allowed to hate), with exciting and hilarious scenes mostly centered around Steinfeld's Mattie Ross, who takes on a series of world weary incredulous good ol' boys, who one after another find themselves amazed to be doing exactly what she tells them to after dismissing her out of hand initially.

As Mattie and Rooster take to the wild to hunt down her father's killer they are joined off-and-on-again (depending on who won the last argument) by LaBoeuf, a semi-incompetent lawman competently played by Matt Damon and his new I-can-do-other-things-besides-Bourne sideburns and a cast of strange and dangerous cowboys and rustlers. Josh Brolin stars in a minor role that doesn't even appear until late in the movie, in a way the opposite of his role in "No Country for Old Men," where he played a major character who died halfway through.

As with many Coen Bros.' efforts, it's very violent, but not overly or gratuitously so, and some of the best humor arises from the most violent scenes. After promising a dying opponent to bury him, for example, Rooster later reneges on the promise, saying "if he wanted to be buried, he shoulda got hisself kilt in summer" (instead of winter, with the ground frozen). "True Grit" contains some of the Coen's best written dialogue since "Fargo."  Watch out for multiple Oscar nods, especially for newcomer Steinfeld as Mattie.