True grit

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.Starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Hailee Steinfeld, Barry Pepper, Domhnall Gleeson, Ed Lee Corbin 15A cert, gen release, 109 min

The Coen brothers graft their wry modern sensibility onto a tried-and-true western template. The result is a small classic of this dusty genre, writes DONALD CLARKE

THOUGH THE Coen brothers have claimed (fairly, it must be said) that their unusually warm new film should be regarded as a fresh adaptation of a hugely admired Charles Portis novel, many viewers will (equally fairly) continue to view it as a remake of Henry Hathaway’s enjoyable, solidly conventional take on the story.

1969 was a significant year for the western. A few weeks after the first True Grit– for which John Wayne finally won an Oscar – hit screens, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunchoffered cinemagoers a class of dual obituary. The story concerned the end of the outlaw period. The film itself was seen as the last gasp for an outmoded genre.

Well, the western did hang around. But, over the last four decades, the form seems to have become trapped in "elegiac" mode. From The Outlaw Josey Walesto Unforgivento Dances with Wolves, those westerns that register have continued to deal with the end of eras. The Coens' film is no exception. At its leathery core, True Gritfocuses on a nuanced conflict between the coming ordered west and its anarchic predecessor.

In a performance fired by precocious dignity, young Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, a teenager who has travelled to Kansas with a civilised class of justice on her mind. The girl wants to see the thuggish Tom Chaney (useful Josh Brolin), her father’s killer, tracked down, but, whereas others feel any old retribution will do, Mattie is clear that – as she is paying the bounty hunter – Tom must be tried for dad’s murder rather than for any of his other crimes. Prim, articulate, pedantic, she believes both in God’s law and man’s law.

Rooster Cogburn, the one-eyed old soak she selects for the job, stands as a heaving, staggering, belching personification of the vanishing order. In the earlier picture, John Wayne, despite his character’s taste for strong booze and mild profanity, still came across as a passably civilised individual.

Here, carrying on his first conversation with Mattie from the smelly side of an outhouse door, Jeff Bridges’s version of Rooster – though endlessly charismatic and accidentally charming – is the sort of chap who, if spied boarding a train, would cause even the most tolerant commuter to change carriage (if not vehicle). Something between a drunk bison and an ambulatory compost heap, Mr Cogburn, often slurred to the point of incomprehensibility, carries the weight of a century’s lore and history on his considerable shoulders.

A somewhat pompous Texas Ranger named LeBoeuf (loveable Matt Damon) accompanies the odd couple for much of their journey. Dressed more like Roy Rogers than Josey Wales (shiny spurs, well-brushed suede) LeBoeuf reminds us that, some two decades before the beginning of the 20th century, faux-mythologies were already invading the west.

So this True Gritdoes travel down familiar trails. Essentially an extended chase movie, it follows the heroes as they venture into Indian country, become entangled with outlaws and, almost by chance, happen upon the cynical, dough-brained murderer.

The story never strays very far from that of the Wayne version. The Coens have, however, found a pleasingly unfamiliar tone for their piece. Casting living daguerreotypes such as Domhnall Gleeson in supporting roles, the film combines a striving towards authenticity with a creeping sense of otherworldliness. Bodies hang high from trees. Amateur shamans wonder the forests. The brothers never risk drifting into the antic eccentricity that characterises more surreal pieces such A Serious Manor The Big Lebowski, but a faint hint of unreality reminds us that the characters are moving through a dying world.

You could, if you were being picky, seek to downgrade the Coen's latest release as a superior cover version. That would be unfair. With No Country for Old Men, their first film adapted from a novel, and now True Grit, the directors have demonstrated a canny talent for smuggling their own wry urban sensibility into other people's stories set far from the suburbs.

True Gritis a great western. It is also a great Coen brothers film. Happily, the genres never seem in conflict.