Ryan McNeil
Go tell that long tongue liar
Go tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter –
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down.
The tale of TRUE GRIT begins with reports of the murder of Frank Ross. He is shot in the back by one of his hired hands named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Chaney then robs Ross of two gold pieces and a horse before fleeing for his life. Not long after, Ross’ daughter Mattie (Hailee Steinfeld) travels a few towns over to collect his body. It’s then that she takes matters into her own hands.
Letting U.S. Marshalls bring Chaney back in due course isn’t enough for Mattie. She wants a lawman with true grit to hunt him down, and make sure he is put to death for what he has done. Whether Chaney dies after due process or not doesn’t concern Mattie in the slightest. She is pointed towards Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) – an eye patch wearing drunkard, who has killed at least two dozen men…and doesn’t seem to let of of their souls weigh on his mind.
Cogburn doesn’t seem interested at first, but in the meantime a Texas Ranger named LeBoeuf (Matt Damon) does talk to Mattie about a manhunt for Chaney. The hitch, is that LaBoeuf is tracking him for a crime Chaney committed in Texas, and wants to take him back there to hang for his sins. To Mattie, this will not stand. She wants Chaney to be counted for what he did to her family – nothing else matters.
After much hem’ing and haw’ing, LaBoeuf, Cogburn, and Ross reluctantly set out together after Chaney. And while they differ in opinion on where to find him, how to catch him, and what to do once they get him, they can all agree on one thing:
One way or another, Tom Chaney must die.
TRUE GRIT feels like a sermon about cowardice and consequences. The movie begins with a quote, pointing out that the lowest form of cowards are the ones that run when nobody is there to chase them. What sort of fate should befall such a person? Do they deserve the mercy and luxury of the law? It wouldn’t seem so if even a fourteen-year-old can grasp the gutlessness of the action. No. In the society TRUE GRIT inhabits, such lack of spine merits bounty hunters, vigilante justice, and retribution.
Mattie is determined without being precocious…which makes her harder to handle for all involved. This is a time and place where someone like her isn’t taken seriously, which she obviously knows since she doesn’t waste time acting meek or mincing words. When that doesn’t work, she’s not above riding a hose across a river just to get a grown-up’s attention. On the one hand, such actions seem reckless and foolish. However, it’s clear that for Mattie such a feat is calculated, since it’s the sort of thing that will prove just enough mettle to earn her a ride-along (even if her head is too small for her hat).
Rooster meanwhile, is a man who seems to drifting further and further away from the parameters of civilization. Already gaining a reputation for mercilessness, Bridges plays him like a man who is only using the law as a means to an end. He doesn’t respect the law…doesn’t even have a wicked amount of interest in upholding the law. Listening to him testify, reflecting on his methods, and watching him track down Chaney, it’s abundantly clear that flies the flag of the law only when it serves his bottom line.
It’s difficult to decide what is colder: that a marshall like Rooster is permitted to act outside of the law, or that someone as young as Mattie goes to him to get a particular brand of justice. In a society that turns a blind eye to these sorts of blood contracts, all it takes is one bad decision until one finds that they “have it coming”. Sure, what Chaney did was heinous…but how long until mere misunderstandings start warranting a lynching?
What makes all of this feel so special, is the manner in which this western – while an adaptation of a classic novel – seems to clearly inhabit The Coen Brothers’ universe. From the way Rooster pronounces LeBoeuf’s name to the quick wit that Mattie possesses, there are a lot of markers around TRUE GRIT that indicate that some scenes and characters could be transplanted into FARGO or O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? with very minimal tweaking necessary.
This movie takes those Coen-isms and dots a grim and classic tale with them. In many ways it contains touchstones of all their greatest films, while still being very faithful to the source material. While flawed, the resulting tale of payback is a sobering look at a desire for justice the law cannot provide, and the sort of damage it can do to a person’s conscience.