True Grit and the Disappointment of PG-13

Hey, so I just saw True Grit today (along with The King’s Speech, which was sublime) and, well, I don’t know if your view on the rating has changed since writing this, but I thought I’d address what you said here now that I’ve seen the movie.

“I wasn’t completely sure I bought Matt Damon in the role, stupidly going by only a few seconds from which to judge.”

Matt Damon is simply a very solid, secondary character here. I think he is believable in the role. Damon will not get nearly as much ink devoted to his role as the two main performances, but he is just fine in the role in my eyes.

“And maybe Jeff Bridges’ character seemed just a bit too over-the-top.”

He isn’t. I personally think Roger Ebert nailed it in his review:

“Bridges doesn’t have the archetypal stature of the Duke. Few ever have. But he has here, I believe, an equal screen presence. We always knew we were looking at John Wayne in the original “True Grit” (1969). When we see Rooster Cogburn in this version, we’re not thinking about Jeff Bridges.

[He] play[s] Rooster with a savory nastiness that Wayne could not have equaled.”

Unlike the other movie Jeff Bridges is in that recently came out, he is not drawing from characters he has played previously in True Grit. The trailers seem to suggest that this might be the case, but I didn’t see that in his performance.

“These are the guys that from their first feature, Blood Simple, reveled in violent consequences. These are the guys that filmed Miller’s Crossing and Fargo. Why’d they decide to pussy out with a western? And why’d they have to play up Bridges’ character as a sheriff who shoots first and asks later if I don’t get to see the carnage he inflicts?”

There is violence aplenty in this movie, in multiple scenes, and you definitely do get to see the carnage. I was actually kind of taken aback at first, as I expected “PG-13 violence” going in. Clearly you can get away with a lot more now, as this violence is absolutely comparable to what you’ve seen in other works by the Coens. The main PG-13 element you’ll notice is the lack of profanity. No “shit”s, and no “fuck”s, unless I missed one. I didn’t find that their absence took away from the movie at all, though.

“It’s also that so much of the Coen’s dark comedic undertones and so many of their disturbing, yet hilarious ideas only worked within that R rating. It’s not that you can’t make a great PG-13 film, but I just don’t see the Coen’s utilizing their full talent within such a framework.”

There is not the same level of dark comedy in True Grit, but it is there, and I’d definitely call parts of the movie dark. It may not be as full of their trademark ideas as some of their other works, but to compare it to their other western of sorts, this does have a lot more in it than No Country For Old Men.

You do say at the end that you’ll be seeing it anyways, but I thought I’d offer my perspective, take from it what you will. I don’t want to hype the movie to unrealistic proportions, but I enjoyed it immensely. Hailee Stanfield is particularly impressive. Hers is the type of performance that should be judged not as a particularly good child actor, but as a good actress period. I haven’t seen Winter’s Bone or Black Swan, so I won’t say it’s the best female performance this year or anything like that, but it is very good. Hope you enjoy the movie whenever you see it.