True Grit is a 2010 American western film written and directed by the Coen brothers. It is the second adaptation of Charles Portis' 1968 novel of the same name, which was previously filmed in 1969 starring John Wayne. This version stars Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross and Jeff Bridges as U. S. Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn, along with Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Barry Pepper.
Filming began in March 2010, and True Grit was officially released in the U. S. on December 22, 2010 (after advance screenings earlier that month). The film opened the 61st Berlin International Film Festival on February 10, 2011. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Jeff Bridges), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Hailee Steinfeld), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing. The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 7, 2011.
Plot: Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) explains that her father was murdered by one of his hired hands, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), when she was 14 years old. While collecting her father's body, Mattie queries the local sheriff about the search for Chaney. After being told that Chaney has fled with "Lucky" Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper) and his gang into Indian Territory, where the sheriff has no authority, she inquires about hiring a Deputy U.S. Marshal. The sheriff gives three recommendations, and Mattie chooses to hire Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), whom the sheriff had described as being the "meanest. " The taciturn, one-eyed Cogburn rebuffs her offer, not believing she has the reward money to hire him. She raises the money by aggressively horse-trading with Colonel Stonehill (Dakin Matthews), who did business with her father.
Meanwhile, Texas Ranger LeBoeuf (Matt Damon) arrives on the trail of Chaney for the murder of a Texas state senator. LeBoeuf proposes to team up with Cogburn, who knows the Choctaw terrain where Chaney is hiding, but Mattie refuses his offer. Mattie wishes Chaney to be hanged in Arkansas for her father's murder, not in Texas for killing the senator. Mattie also insists on traveling with Cogburn to search for Chaney, but Cogburn later leaves without her, having gone with LeBoeuf to apprehend Chaney.
After being refused passage on the ferry that conveyed Cogburn and LeBoeuf, Mattie crosses the river on horseback. LeBoeuf expresses his displeasure by birching Mattie with a switch rod, but Cogburn eventually stops him. After a dispute over their respective service with the Confederate States of America – Cogburn served with Quantrill's Raiders and LeBoeuf with Edmund Kirby Smith – Cogburn ends their arrangement and LeBoeuf leaves. Later, while pursuing the Pepper gang that Chaney is reportedly traveling with, the two meet a trail doctor who directs them to an empty dugout for shelter. There they find two outlaws, Quincey (Paul Rae) and Moon (Domhnall Gleeson), and interrogate them. As Moon acquiesces by divulging what he knows to Cogburn, Quincey fatally stabs Moon, before Cogburn shoots Quincey dead. Before dying, Moon says Pepper and his gang will be returning later that night.
Just before the Pepper gang arrives, LeBoeuf arrives at the dugout and is taken hostage. Cogburn, hiding on the hillside with Mattie, shoots and kills two gang members, but Pepper escapes. The next day, Cogburn gets in a drunken argument with LeBoeuf, who departs once again. While getting water from a nearby stream, Mattie encounters Chaney. She shoots him, but he survives and drags her back to Ned, who forces Cogburn to leave by threatening to kill her. Being short a horse, Ned leaves Mattie with Chaney, ordering him not to harm her or he will not get paid after his remount arrives.
Once alone, Chaney disobeys Ned and tries to kill Mattie. LeBoeuf appears and knocks Chaney out, explaining that he rode back when he heard the shots, and he and Cogburn devised a plan. They watch from a cliff as Cogburn takes on the remaining members of Ned's gang, killing two and wounding Ned, before his horse is struck and falls, trapping Cogburn's leg. Before Pepper can kill Cogburn, LeBoeuf shoots and kills Pepper from roughly four hundred yards away. Chaney regains consciousness and knocks LeBoeuf unconscious with a rock. Mattie seizes LeBoeuf's rifle and shoots Chaney dead in the chest. The recoil, however, knocks her into a deep pit containing rattlesnakes. Cogburn arrives, but Mattie is bitten on her hand before he can get to her. Cogburn cuts into her wound to suck out as much of the poison as he can, and then rides day and night to get Mattie to a doctor, carrying her on foot after her horse collapses from exhaustion, finally making his way to Bagby's store.
Twenty-five years later, Mattie (Elizabeth Marvel) – now 40, reveals through narration that she had her left forearm amputated due to the gangrene from the snakebite. Cogburn stayed with her at Bagby's until she was out of danger, though he left the store before she regained consciousness. Mattie never saw Cogburn again, despite a letter she wrote to him inviting him to visit and to collect the $50 she still owed him the next time he was near Yell County. She receives a note from Cogburn inviting her to meet him at a traveling Wild West show in which he now performs. She arrives, only to learn that Cogburn died three days earlier. She has his body moved to her family cemetery. Standing over Cogburn's grave, she reflects on her decision to move his remains, and about never having married. She also reveals that she never saw LaBoeuf again, though she would like to, and imagines that some of the starch has probably gone out of his cowlick by now, observing that "time just gets away from us".
Cast:
Jeff Bridges as U.S. Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn
Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross
Matt Damon as Texas Ranger LeBoeuf
Josh Brolin as Tom Chaney
Barry Pepper as "Lucky" Ned Pepper
Domhnall Gleeson as Moon (the Kid)
Ed Lee Corbin as Bear Man (Dr. Forrester)
Roy Lee Jones as Yarnell Poindexter
Paul Rae as Emmett Quincy
Nicholas Sadler as Sullivan
Bruce Green as Harold Parmalee
Joe Stevens as Lawyer Goudy
Dakin Matthews as Colonel Stonehill
Elizabeth Marvel as 40-year-old Mattie
Leon Russom as Sheriff
Jake Walker as Judge Isaac Parker
Peter Leung as Mr. Lee
Don Pirl as Cole Younger
James Brolin as Frank James (uncredited cameo)
Jarlath Conroy as The Undertaker
J. K. Simmons as Lawyer J. Noble Daggett (voice only; uncredited)
Adaptation and production:
The project was rumored as far back as February 2008;[5] however it was not confirmed until March 2009.
Ahead of shooting, Ethan Coen said that the film would be a more faithful adaptation of the novel than the 1969 version.
It's partly a question of point-of-view. The book is entirely in the voice of the 14-year-old girl. That sort of tips the feeling of it over a certain way. I think [the book is] much funnier than the movie was so I think, unfortunately, they lost a lot of humor in both the situations and in her voice. It also ends differently than the movie did. You see the main character – the little girl – 25 years later when she's an adult. Another way in which it's a little bit different from the movie – and maybe this is just because of the time the movie was made – is that it's a lot tougher and more violent than the movie reflects. Which is part of what's interesting about it.
Mattie Ross "is a pill, " said Ethan Coen in a December 2010 interview, "but there is something deeply admirable about her in the book that we were drawn to, " including the Presbyterian-Protestant ethic so strongly imbued in a 14-year-old girl. Joel Coen said that the brothers did not want to "mess around with what we thought was a very compelling story and character". The film's producer, Scott Rudin, said that the Coens had taken a "formal, reverent approach" to the Western genre, with its emphasis on adventure and quest. "The patois of the characters, the love of language that permeates the whole film, makes it very much of a piece with their other films, but it is the least ironic in many regards".
pen casting sessions were held in Texas in November 2009 for the role of Mattie Ross. The following month, Paramount Pictures announced a casting search for a 12- to 16-year-old girl, describing the character as a "simple, tough as nails young woman" whose "unusually steely nerves and straightforward manner are often surprising". Steinfeld, then age 13, was selected for the role from a pool of 15,000 applicants. "It was, as you can probably imagine, the source of a lot of anxiety", Ethan Coen told The New York Times. "We were aware if the kid doesn't work, there's no movie".
The film was shot in the Santa Fe, New Mexico area in March and April 2010, as well as in Granger and Austin, Texas. The first trailer was released in September; a second trailer premiered with The Social Network.
True Grit is the first Coen brothers film to receive a PG-13 rating since 2003's Intolerable Cruelty for "some intense sequences of western violence including disturbing images. "
For the final segment of the film, a one-armed body double was needed for Elizabeth Marvel (who played the adult Mattie). After a nationwide call, the Coen brothers cast Ruth Morris – a 29-year-old social worker and student who was born without a left forearm.Morris has more screen time in the film than Marvel.