Frank Ross was murdered by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and Frank’s daughter, Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) has come to town to settle all her father’s business – including making sure that Chaney is brought to justice. Ms. Ross enlists the services of the toughest U.S. Marshall available, Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), to assist her in enacting justice. LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) tags along as a Texas Ranger who’s after the same man.

The Coen Brothers, made famous for movies such as Fargo and The Big Lebowski, have basically resuscitated the life of westerns for me. In the last decade there have only been about a dozen or so really good westerns to speak of. The genre has been plagued with mediocre efforts like Appaloosa and The Good, The Bad, The Wierd and just doesn’t have the same mainstream following that it had back in the 60s and before.

Last year I did a marathon of some of the greatest westerns of all time that I had yet to see, which actually included the original 1969 John Wayne classic film True Grit. I had a few problems with the movie overall but I didn’t outright hate anything about it. However, the Coen’s did what I wanted done with the story from the getgo; which is to make it feel real to me. Somehow films in the 60s – maybe it’s the time and how they were a bit repressive of certain elements of stories then or how unfiltered it seems now – just seem overall tame.

This version felt like the real west version of the film with these larger than life characters. From the old, fat and tough as nails Cogburn to the youthful and headstrong ways of Mattie Ross the movie is just filled with characters to fall in love with in the best way.

One thing that I loved about this movie – which I must say is quite possibly one of my favourite things about film – is the dialogue. The way that everyone spoke in the movie is not only so varying but also so elegant. People like to call the French language beautiful because even when the French curse you it sounds like poetry, to me it felt like everyone was speaking French. Every character knew how to say what they wanted to say and had a certain elegance to not only their diction but also their enunciation (or lack thereof when talking about Cogburn).

One thing that made me definitely go ‘over the moon’ with this remake is how the Coen’s decided to change the epilogue from the original movie. I know that this film was an adaptation of the original novel and not of the 60s film and they claim that they decided to stay closer to the source material. If that’s why I got this brilliantly honest ending then I’m happy for it. I’ve never read the book – as you may hear me say a lot here – but this is definitely the way to end this story and not on the unearned hopeful/happy note that the original ends with.

If you’d like to hear me gloat more about the film then just copy and paste, what me and my cohosts on TUMP call, the list of critic cliché praises: i.e. it had some great cinematography, direction, acting, etc.

This is definitely one of the best films of 2010 and without a doubt would knock its way into my TOP TEN of the year had I seen it when I was writing my list. It definitely isn’t my #1 of the year by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s one of the movies that has eventually turned a horrible year of cinema into a somewhat memorable one that I think can definitely be stacked up against some of the great ones of the last decade for sure.

IMDB says 8.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 95%

I say 10/10