Joel & Ethan Coen, Haylee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper.
When I saw the trailer for this I nearly fell off the chair. This is the kind of material I think suits the Coens the best. To my mind No Country For Old Men is a masterpiece, and True Grit looked like it might be just as good.
Is it? Well, it's close. It's wonderful, and I adore it, but it lacks the breath-taking magnificence of the third act of No Country.
Still, it's unmissable to anyone who likes a Western. I saw it alone in the middle of a hot summer's afternoon. Thank God, too, Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn delivers his dialogue in a voice wracked by alcohol, tobacco and God-knows what else, and while I just about managed to take it in without too much trouble, my French wife would have been mystified, and there's nothing like having an increasingly angry companion who hates the movie you're watching to spoil your own enjoyment. A cinema visit is, after all, an experience where the film itself is tempered or enhanced by the audience with whom one shares it. Blah blah blah.
True Grit also gave me the impetus to buy Cormac MacCarthy's Blood Meridian on audio-book. Now there's a revisionist Western, full of vicious, racist, murderous scumbags, and a villain right out of The Bumper Book of Mythological Utter Bastards. I love it.
NOTEWORTHY: Barry Pepper and Domhnall Gleeson's turns as outlaws. Haylee Steinfeld's incomprehensible Oscar nomination for best supporting actress when she's clearly the lead. Night-for-night shooting with entire landscapes (or so it seems at times) lit by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins.