True Grit

I turned on Beth after this. It's not a shallow sound but even in its well crafted melancholy it's not out of body.

That's not a problem. I still get a lot from it. But the last three films I've seen before this had a visceral sense to them. Of having been a little torn up. But I'm not feeling that now.

Nor do I think this was in anyway the aim. It's funny as you'd expect it to be. There's something of dickens (but not necessarily dickensian) about the side characters they create. Comedic, eccentric and with most of the jokes slipping in as you're riding off (literally in one case). Their sense of the absurd is spot on. And I think is far more powerful for finding its way into a western.

And as I've come to expect the action scenes are tense and immaculately directed. There's a great scene when an entire confrontation is filmed from the point of view of Jeff Bridges and a girl up on a ridge. You can't hear what's going on and the action consequently has a removed quality which feels far fresher and more exciting than another Sub greengrass flurry of steadycam rushes.

And the performances are good. I liked Matt Damon's role. He was a man with some sense of old school chivalry but neither the bravery or the smarts to totally pull it off. He's flawed in that light not too remarkable way most of us are. It was refreshing after the many highly driven creatures with big flaws I've been watching recently.

Speaking of driven: The girl's fantastic. Her precociousness somehow never grates. Partly because it's a true precociousness- she happily admits that there are things she can't do as well as others. She's not afraid to be scared.

But she does suffer from a terrible over assurance. SPOILER. Although to be honest all my reviews are pretty spoiler heavy.

She pays a heavy price for her pig headed determination. She is so smart and canny and bossy she might well have struggled to find a suitable mate in the wild west regardless. But I think the trip, the trauma, the loss of the arm, the stories that went with it, guaranteed it.

Her strength, her brains, her courage allow her to go off and do something remarkable but when she is so young that she doesn't see why the consequences may not be worth the actions. That the results are fairly derisory for a price that you sense is any chance of enjoying the rest of her life.

Telling that familiar tale of vengeance at a terrible price through a teenage girl does work but I'm struck that it took a bit of time for me to feel it and even as I write this, I'm wondering if I'm overdoing the effect it had on the rest of her life.

Certainly I didn't come out of the cinema thinking about the price of venegence particularly.

I think that's mainly because it ends weakly. Like a History of violence it takes a story with strong characters and psychological needs and gives it a straight action ending. It's enjoyable and there are a couple good surprises to the third act but it feels lacking in substance.

And then there's a epilogue which is distinctly unsatisfying. Much of the conjecture I've been talking about comes from that. Much of what makes it more than just a cowboy romp. But they're poor scenes. Undramatic, unengaging.

So good. Very good. But I'm not sure if it wanted to be just purely enjoyable or strived for more than that and so ended up with an end which for my money fell between two stools.