True Grit

About the film

Contains story spoilers.

Mattie Ross arrives in Fort Smith with a job the adults around her would prefer to make smaller. Her father is dead, his killer has escaped, and she is expected to settle the practical business and return home. Instead, she treats every conversation as part of an investigation. Hailee Steinfeld plays her as someone who has already decided what the correct outcome should be and sees little reason to tolerate delay. Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit, adapted from Charles Portis's novel, is a Western viewed through that formidable child's understanding of fairness. There are horses, guns and dangerous country, but its first contests happen across counters and desks. Mattie has to persuade people that her demand carries weight before anyone will ride with her.

Her opponent in a negotiation can be a horse trader rather than an outlaw. Dakin Matthews's Colonel Stonehill discovers that youth does not make her an easy customer: she follows an argument through to its financial consequences, refusing to be distracted by condescension. These exchanges establish her character more effectively than a speech about courage could. Mattie believes agreements should mean something, accounts should balance and wrongdoing should receive a precise answer. That gives her a language for approaching grief without openly surrendering to it. The film's humour often grows from the collision between her severe composure and a supposedly sensible adult's growing frustration. She is funny without trying to entertain anybody. The conviction behind the bargaining is also what will take her into circumstances that cannot be negotiated away.

The murderer, Tom Chaney, has fled into Indian Territory with Ned Pepper's gang. Mattie selects Rooster Cogburn because his reputation suggests he will pursue the man aggressively. Jeff Bridges gives Rooster an untidy physical presence and a voice that seems to have accumulated years of drink and argument. He has the experience Mattie needs and habits she cannot respect. Matt Damon plays LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger pursuing Chaney for a separate murder. Their disagreement about which crime should determine the fugitive's punishment makes justice more complicated than Mattie's original plan. The three cannot even settle comfortably into a division of authority: Rooster and LaBoeuf dispute expertise, while Mattie refuses to accept that paying for the expedition means being excluded from it.

The journey makes their arguments concrete. Distance, weather, ammunition and injuries matter more than grand statements about bravery. Mattie's determination gets her across a river and into the expedition, but it cannot make the country safer. Rooster's violence can be useful without becoming clean or admirable. LaBoeuf's pride can irritate the others while concealing genuine skill. Their quarrels change as each discovers something the others can actually do. A threatened ambush at a dugout shows how quickly a plan can collapse when people arrive unexpectedly and guns start firing. The film does not build a neat progression from mutual annoyance to perfect teamwork. Trust emerges unevenly, through errors, temporary separations and occasions when someone returns after apparently having walked away.

Its frontier is sparsely populated without feeling empty. A cabin, a campfire or a figure appearing on a trail can introduce another way of surviving outside the settled town. The people encountered do not arrange themselves politely into the expedition's moral categories. Some are dangerous, some peculiar, and some useful for a moment. Against this world, Mattie's carefully formed sentences are an attempt to maintain order. Rooster's recollections and the men's disputes introduce a past she cannot control. The Western landscape may permit the pursuit, but it also reduces the comfort of thinking that a justified mission must therefore succeed. The Coens leave room for absurdity in that discomfort. An argument about professional competence can sit beside a very real risk of being killed, with neither cancelling the other.

When Mattie finally confronts Chaney, the encounter becomes a hostage crisis rather than the orderly capture she wanted. Rooster charges Pepper's men; LaBoeuf's distant rifle shot saves him. Mattie kills Chaney, but the rifle's recoil sends her into a pit, where a snake bites her. Rooster rescues her and drives himself and her horse beyond endurance to reach help. The shift in urgency is decisive. Catching the killer has occupied the story; keeping Mattie alive now matters more. Rooster's courage becomes most revealing when there is no outlaw left to impress and no audience for the effort. The ride through darkness strips away much of his bluster. What remains is the exhausting physical work of refusing to abandon the child.

Mattie survives, losing an arm. The older woman who recalls the expedition cannot convert that survival into a painless ending. Years later, she goes to see Rooster at a travelling Wild West show and learns that he has recently died. She arranges for his burial near her family. The show suggests a frontier already being packaged into entertainment, while Mattie's memory preserves a relationship that cannot be performed again. Elizabeth Marvel's older Mattie carries the same firmness as the girl, with time visible around it. The narrative has allowed a child to achieve something extraordinary without promising that achievement will bring marriage, lasting companionship or freedom from loss. Her loyalty remains active even when the person who earned it is beyond reach.

The film's shape turns the pursuit into a recollection rather than a victory parade. Carter Burwell's score supplies a mournful, reflective counterweight to the dry exchanges, and the contrast between Mattie's clear delivery and Rooster's rough speech keeps their different worlds audible. Night scenes, small figures against open country and the last solitary walk place human resolve inside a much larger passage of time. Mattie's insistence is not dismissed, but it is tested by consequences her original calculation could not include. The story lets her keep the memory of Rooster's care alongside the permanent cost of the journey. That combination gives the title more than one meaning: grit can be stubbornness, endurance or the decision to help somebody when continuing has become almost impossible.