True Grit (2010)

Release date: 2010-12-22
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Production Co: Paramount Pictures, Skydance Media, Scott Rudin Productions
Genre: Western, Drama
Rating: 7.6/10
Length: 1h 50min

Storyline

Following the murder of her father by hired hand Tom Chaney, 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross sets out to capture the killer. To aid her, she hires the toughest U.S. marshal she can find, a man with "true grit," Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn. Mattie insists on accompanying Cogburn, whose drinking, sloth, and generally reprobate character do not augment her faith in him. Against his wishes, she joins him in his trek into the Indian Nations in search of Chaney. They are joined by Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, who wants Chaney for his own purposes. The unlikely trio find danger and surprises on the journey, and each has his or her "grit" tested.

Plot Keywords

revisionist western, based on novel, public execution, spanking, dragged by a horse, 1870s, snake, cut hand, severed arm, amputee, thrown from a horse, pit, character repeating someone else's dialogue, gunfight, snake bite, hit on the head with a rock, finger cut off, stabbed in the chest, rescue, rain

Short Review

The Coen brothers' excellent western True Grit is a second and rather different version of Charles Portis's novel, rather than a remake of the 1969 film that brought John Wayne an Oscar as the one-eyed bounty hunter Marshal Rooster Cogburn.