True Grit

History fascinates me when it is played by true-to-life characters. Coen brothers are masters of re-telling old tales. Plain earthy stories where there are no exalted glories or flag waving millions or stiff parades of generals, history of O,Brother Where Art Thou variety.

Stories like True Grit is the meat and potato of Coen brothers. It takes us back to the turn of the century to the Deep South bordering the unruly West. The land of outlaws and bounty hunters, landscape stretched as wide as it is earthly possible, forlorn outposts manned by lost souls at the frontiers humanity where someone is always on the run and somebody is always in pursuit. 

This is the un-chartered territory where a young girl goes looking for her father’s killer. Her interesting journey made all the more interesting by a couple of quirky companions – unadulterated account of the West when the frontier was still a wild country, now it has shifted to the southern fences of Arizona, but that’s another story. Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin make up the cast of this remake. 

The original 1969 movie was a western adapted from a serial in a magazine and the original also spawned a sequel called Rooster Cogburn. It is the kind of movie that runs on the strength of the screen play and its characters, with someone as colorful as Rooster Cogburn it is hard not to notice it and Jeff Bridges is the perfect dude for this part. An interesting movie for the lovers of good scripts.