TRUE GRIT
dMYD
Starring Jeff Bridges
M
TRUE GRIT
dMYD DVD
Starring John Wayne
M
Pound for pound the old one wins. A hundred years of rootin’, tootin’ and scoundrel-blastin’ in American film has made the fictional west the real west, and consequently it’s Old Grit that looks the most like the Western you have in your head; the Coen’s new update splashes the story with a lick of old but can’t avoid looking the same as their similarly hewn contemporary effort No Country For Old Men a couple of years back. So Old Grit has the edge in the visuals department, looking even more distanced from our workaday world than the sepia-filtered detail of the new one, even if it does look like Oz in comparison. What’s most disappointing about the remake (and it is a remake. IT IS. Tim Burton invented the phrase ‘reimagining’ and now no one uses it and Tim Burton smells of sick) is the lack of ‘Coenness’ about it, the simplicity of the piece as a whole. It’s a perfectly competent showing of the novel which loses the underlying fizz that runs with their best work, the best lines shared by both versions and not from the Coen’s digits, no genre subverted, no stones upturned. It’s still perfectly entertaining and there are aces: the little lady is incredible and probably should have grabbed that Oscar, the cinematography is vast and landscapy and beautiful. And of course, there’s Jeff Bridges, atoning for falling asleep in Tron Legacy by bringing all his spit-fleck mastery and quiet fury to a touching, grizzled old man who has nothing left but heroism.
But Old Grit has John Wayne. And John Wayne is the Old West.
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