“True Grit” — Mathew DeKinder (Suburban Journals)
Remakes are a dangerous business. It is nearly impossible to improve upon an original version, and if that movie holds some sort of iconic presence in the mind of filmgoers, the venture becomes that much more treacherous.
The cinematic landscape is littered with the corpses of remakes.
Of course, if the smart money were on anyone to pull it off, you’d have to go with the Coen Brothers (and even they have added to the remake body-count with their quickly-forgotten redux of “The Ladykillers”).
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True Grit – Reelworld (Webster-Kirkwood Times)
The Plot:
Following the murder of her father by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) hires U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to help her hunt Chaney and exact justice. Cogburn is at first reluctant to help, but eventually agrees and embarks upon a perilous adventure that will define both Mattie and Cogburn as people and as tamers of the time in which they live.
Kent’s Take:
“True Grit” is both a cinematic and American classic all rolled into one. As America was defining itself and settling its unsettled areas, so was it defining itself by defining right and wrong, and along this cusp rides Rooster... TRUE GRIT-KARL SIDES (The Flick Fanatic.com)
“Grit” (def.): Hard, sharp and abrasive like sandpaper. For an example see Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn!
It is always chancy when it comes to an Ethan & Joel Cohen film; are you going to get the film that you understand and is tied up in a pretty bow at the end (Fargo, Burn After Reading) or will it be their trademark ending when the screen goes black and you are forced to think,”What just happened and how did it end?”(No Country for Old Men). That was the question I pondered as I enter their new film, a remake of the western classic, “TRUE GRIT”. But instead of churning out a new version of the John Wayne hit, the Cohens... Bookmark Us
