Sightlines · reception
How True Grit was received
2010 · Joel Coen · True Grit on Sightlines
The arc
A hit from day one — the Coens' biggest box-office success and a 10-Oscar nominee — but it's since settled into an odd spot: fans keep 're-discovering' it as secretly top-tier Coen rather than the 'minor, classical' entry it was first filed under.
What’s debated
The forever debate: is Jeff Bridges' mumbling Rooster Cogburn an improvement on John Wayne's Oscar-winning original, and was Hailee Steinfeld — in nearly every scene — a lead fraudulently campaigned as Supporting?
Its footprint
It went 0-for-10 at the Oscars, one of the biggest shutouts in Academy history, and became a key exhibit in the 'Roger Deakins can't win' saga (he lost that year too, before finally winning for Blade Runner 2049). Mattie Damon jokes aside, Mattie Haggler's horse-trading scene is endlessly clipped and quoted as an all-time negotiation showcase.
Where it stands
The 'gateway Coen' — their warmest and most classical film, routinely fought over in Coen-ranking lists between 'mid-tier' and 'underrated masterpiece'.
Did you know? Hailee Steinfeld was 13 and essentially unknown when she won the role of Mattie Ross from an open casting call that drew roughly 15,000 girls — and rode it straight to an Oscar nomination.
Named by the director
- The Night of the Hunter (1955) — The Coens invoked Laughton's film as their tonal reference — a child's-eye journey through a perilous adult world — rather than the classic western, and the score is built on the same hymn, 'Leaning on the Everlasting Arms'.