True Grit Review

Rating system (out of five):

Stars = measures the film's cinematic quality.

Hearts = measures the film's enjoyability.

Bowls of Ice cream = measures the numbers of bowls of ice cream it would require to get me to watch the film again.

First off, let me say that I have never seen the original True Grit, so I am reviewing this movie completely independently. I knew the original had John Wayne in it, so I walked in thinking, "Ah, a western. I like westerns. The preview looked cool. My, this seat is nice and squashy." This, I believe, is about as close to a neutral start as someone can have. Neutral as I may have started, it took mere moments before a new thought dominated my brain. Something akin to, "Oh no."

Okay, let's talk about the dialogue in this movie. They made a clear choice not to use contractions. A distracting choice, but a bold move. From the moment the film started, the characters began speaking like strange western Yodas, and though I love Star Wars dearly, it was hard to understand what this vernacular was doing in this film. In my earnest attempt to explain it away, I hoped it was an effort to be true to the language of the period. I'm no expert in linguistics, and thus I have no idea when contractions came into fashion, but I do know a few snuck into the dialogue, and shattered the desperate reasoning I had been feeding myself. Why!? Why no contractions? If the iconic use of verbs like "hangin'" and "shootin'" made the cut, why abandoned the words we associate with all speech, like "couldn't"? As though to antagonize my growing irritation at the strange robot-talk, at one point in the movie, a character said something along the lines of "Old am I." This quote is directly lifted from the endearing syntax errors committed by our lovable, Degobah inhabiting, Jedi master. There had to have been a point where SOMEONE realized how much it is to ask of an audience to endure this alien twist of language in a western.

There were many points, while watching this film, that I sat feeling confused, wondering what experience I was supposed to be having. I experienced very little emotionally. There were some well designed tense moments, and the script was clever, when I could look beyond the Yoda-talk. In fact, with jokes being the only thing moving in the story, it often felt like a very slow comedy. It surely didn't feel like a serious film, with nothing being particularly stirring, and even revenge being sought for pride, rather then love. I couldn't lock into place at any point in this film. I don't think this film knew where it wanted to lock it's viewers; a sentiment that would be admirable were it in the pursuit of imitating reality. Sadly, that was not the case.

One character briefly graced the screen that interested me. A rough and tough cowboy who only spoke in animal sounds. Where is his film? It would be far more interesting to watch a slice out of his life. Tragically, he was a fleeting glimmer of intrigue in a sea of boring, confused, monotonous story, only broken up by startling gun fire.

My rating:

1 Star

1 Heart

4 Bowls of Icecream