True Grit: 4 ½ out of 5 Mattie Ross: Who's the best marshal they have?
Sheriff: Bill Waters is the best tracker. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn, a pitiless man, double tough, fear don't enter into his thinking. I'd have to say L.T. Quinn is the straightest, he brings his prisoners in alive.
Mattie Ross: Where would I find this Rooster?
One of the running themes in many films directed by the Coen brothers (Fargo, No Country for Old Men) has revolved around the idea that they do not seem to like their characters (there is also another running gag that their characters are mostly, for lack of a better word, dumb). As much as we root for them or hope for endings where the protagonist ends up at a shining point in their lives, while the antagonist receives some kind of comeuppance for their wrongdoings, a majority of Coen movies tend to go against the grain in some capacity and function in a more darkly comedic way (Burn After Reading is a good, recent example). This darkness turns many people off (basically because the audience has just watched the Coen’s push a friend of theirs off a cliff). Due to this, it is not often that the Coen’s produce a film with mainstream appeal (Barton Fink or last year’s A Serious Man are perfect examples of this). I have remained a huge Coen brothers fan, but I understand where their objectors are coming from. With all that being said, their adaptation of the Charles Portis novel True Grit, first adapted as a western staring John Wayne, is perhaps their most accessible and enjoyable film since Fargo. It has all the usual quirks that one would find in a Coen film, which will easily satisfy their devotees such as me, but it also has the makings of a film that I believe almost anyone could find entertainment in.
