This Coen Brothers' Film Seems Destined to Become a Classic
Strong in every area of filmmaking, True Grit (2010) was nominated for 10 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Actor (Jeff Bridges), Supporting Actress (newcomer Hailee Steinfeld), Directing (Joel and Ethan Coen), Adapted Screenplay (Joel and Ethan Coen), Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. The music is excellent, but it was ruled insufficiently original to be eligible for an Oscar because composer Carter Burwell based his score on 19th-century Protestant hymns.
The year 1968 saw the publication of Charles Portis' literary novel True Grit, set in the Old West and having as its central character a spunky 14-year-old girl named Mattie Ross. When her father is murdered, she gets US Marshal Rooster Cogburn to track down the killer in Indian Territory wilderness, and she goes along on the adventure.
In 1969 Hollywood released an entertaining movie version of True Grit, but softened Portis' ending and changed some of the character dynamics. The film was made as a star vehicle for John Wayne, who is delightful as Rooster Cogburn, while Mattie was transformed into a young adult played by 20-year-old Kim Darby.
But what the Coen brothers did in their 2010 film was to be faithful to the novel, putting the focus on Mattie and having her portrayed by 13-year-old Hailee Steinfeld. Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn and puts his own twist on the role, creating a more convincing character than John Wayne did. The result is a movie that can be enjoyed by mainstream audiences and is also richly satisfying to cinephiles.
Bonus Materials
The True Grit DVD contains a total of half an hour of supplementary materials.
Perhaps the most interesting extra is the 11-minute "Re-Creating Fort Smith." The early part of True Grit is set mostly in the frontier town of Fort Smith, Arkansas, which in the late 19th century was the last bastion of law and order before crossing the river into Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). But today Fort Smith is a city of 85,000 and has changed dramatically. This featurette tells how the filmmakers created an authentic-looking stand-in for the Fort Smith of the Old West in modern-day Granger, Texas, a town of about 1,400 an hour out of Austin.
Another bonus material is the five-minute "Mattie's True Grit," an interview with young teenager Hailee Steinfeld, who was an unknown when she began making the film and came out of it with an Academy Award nomination for her performance. There's also the eight-minute "From Bustles to Buckskin — Dressing for the 1880s," an interview with Mary Zophres, who got an Oscar nomination for her costume design for the movie. Finally, there's the five-minute "The Cast," which spotlights the actors appearing in the film, including Matt Damon, who is very good in a supporting role as the Texas Ranger who has his own agenda as he accompanies Rooster and Mattie on their quest.DVD Release Date: June 7, 2011
Total Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for Some Intense Sequences of Western Violence Including Disturbing Images