I am not the type of person to say I am never wrong, so I am going to go on the record to be the first to say I was wrong when I discussed with a friend of mine that the new Coen Bros. film, True Grit is not a remake of the 1969 film with John Wayne, because as research has proven, it is. So there. In reality, the 1969 film itself is an adaptation of a novel by author Charles Portis.
This past Friday I was at the theater with my better half watching Jackass 3D which I refuse to review as I only watched it to have a mindless laugh, nor does it necessitate review anyways. I was elated to see a poster that carried a Coen Bros stamp on it, in addition to the names Bridges, Damon, and Brolin. Now quite frankly I don't like to tag the hype on a film based on an actor's name, nor do I try to do the same for a director's, I mean have you seen Burn After Reading?. But it is those two men who brought us Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and A Serious Man, all of these, certifiable modern classics. Before the film started, I had the opportunity to see the trailer. I wont say too much, but i see so much of what makes other Coen Bros. films so great, the characters carry this semblance of dark humor, almost as if the film is gonna be a darkly funny, Western Genre character study. Where as a Serious Man was a study of Shaeden Freude-esque situations of dark humor, this film looks as if the central focus is the mindless humor in how people relate a gritty, primitive era. The setting and plot are clearly serious though, it does not look like its gonna be laugh out loud. These guys do not shy away from gory or even creative violence (read No Country for Old Men), and this film looks to be no different. Their characters always are amoral, which is great because in their films, there is no real good or bad, they know how to craft selfish characters which everyone can kind of relate to on any occasion, they are normal people that are stuck in very surreal situations at any given moment. This is what I love about the Coen Bros., they carry this "stranger than fiction" attitude about their films, its like their movies are saying, "oh, you dont think this could happen to normal people? Fuck you.", and throws a stoner who is on a quest to replace his pissed-on rug into a porn director's mansion, getting the shit beat out of him. It is something so out of the norm that it makes the situation surreal, and yet the content is taboo enough to make an itellectual enough mind to watch it and get drawn in. It is the beauty of the tone they set for the film.
Well, it may be because in the past few years, there has been successful "Western" media that this may seem attractive to trends, but I have firm beliefs that these guys know how keep this creation their own.
Definitely gonna see this one.
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