Westerns are awesome. I know I'm late to jump on the bandwagon, but "True Grit" was an excellent movie; it's up for 10 Academy Awards, after all.
Over break, I had a conversation with my brother on the way to see the new Coen Brothers' movie. It went something like this:
Bro: "Why are we seeing this movie? It seems boring and slow and I don't like Westerns." Me: "Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about. Everyone loves the Wild West; they just don't know it yet."
And you know what? He did like "True Grit." It was due in no small part to the tightly written script and the spot-on acting of Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and relatively-unknown Hailee Steinfield in the leading roles. And the quirky directors. But really, he liked it because it was a Western.
Kids these days don't realize how good Westerns are and I hope "True Grit" is a shift toward reclaiming our national film heritage. At their core, Westerns are a straightforward affair: Some old dude has to do something, whether it's get revenge, find some treasure or do the bidding of some upstart little girl in the case of "True Grit," and he goes about doing this self-appointed task. He goes through some trials and tribulations, builds a slow and steady relationship with those around him and eventually, at the climax of the movie, the old dude has to tear it up with the bad guys.
Westerns are a simple beast but they effectively tell morality tales. We follow the characters through their respective ups and downs so that we end up empathizing with them. If we had the slow plodding middle but no climax, there would be no resolution to the story, and if we had the gun-slinging without the campfire scenes, there would be no emotional impact on the danger.
Chances are you already like a lot of Western movies. Sure, there's the new rash of 'em, like "True Grit" and "3:10 to Yuma," but there are also a good number of movies that might talk like city-folk while deep down they walk like a bow-legged cowboy. Quentin Tarantino has made a number of them, such as the "Kill Bill" films (2003 and 2004) and "Inglourious Basterds" (2009). Fan of the TV show "Firefly" (2002-3)? You're a fan of westerns. Remember Pixar's "A Bug's Life" (1998)? WESTERN. "The Last Samurai" (2003) with the very out-of-place Tom Cruise? THINK FAST — WESTERN. The underappreciated Marky Mark movie "Four Brothers" (2005)? BOOM, WESTERN.
I guess I shouldn't call Westerns a genre. That's like classifying "The Wire" (2002-8) as just a cop show or "Battlestar Galactica" (2004-9) as just sci-fi. The tropes of a Western movie have filtered through our general consciousness and become more a state of mind than a genre. You might get a movie like "True Grit" and see horses and revolvers and think, "well, golly, this is a Western." But when I watch "Inglourious Basterds," I see Nazis and American guerillas and I feel like tumbleweeds are missing. Heck, a part of me wants to call "127 Hours" (2010), the recent one-man show starring James Franco as Aron Ralston against the rock, a Western. Everyone knows what's coming, but if you don't see the hour and a half leading up to the famed moment, it's just kind of gross.
Sure, Westerns can be slow and boring. The classic "High Noon" (1952) is rough to watch without some coffee, but you know what? If you invest in these movies, you'll get something out of them — which is much more than I can say about a lot of blockbusters coming out these days. Also, "True Grit" had that crazy bear guy. That dude single-handedly makes the movie worth seeing.
