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I expected True Grit to be good but I didn’t expect it to be so funny. Which is strange because it’s a Coen Brothers movie; you know there will be laughs, especially the horrified kind (ex. In No Country for Old Men every time Anton Chigurh appeared I would start laughing at his hair. Then he would produce that compressed air bolt pistol, a ridiculous weapon, but I also knew something terrible was going to happen so my face didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe.) Maybe because it’s a western and to me western says Serious. A western that starred John Wayne, whom my parents loved, so doubly Serious.

The Coen Brothers’ philosophy may be boiled down to a single tenet: People are stupid. The smarter they think they are, the stupider they turn out to be. The more thorough their plan, the more they are foiled. And when it looks like they might get away with it, Fate steps in. In the Coen Brothers universe, thinking that you can win against Fate is the height of stupidity.

The three most recent Coens movies have an Old Testament thing going: No Country, A Serious Man—a film adaptation of the Book of Job, and True Grit, a tale of retribution in the Wild West, complete with High King James Bible English. A man is robbed and murdered by a hired hand named Tom Cheney. His 14-year-old daughter Mattie Ross wants revenge. She raises funds and goes looking for a man to hunt down her father’s killer. Finally she settles on Rooster Cogburn, a hard-drinking, trigger-happy, fat, one-eyed marshal who accepts the $100 bounty ($50 down payment). They go into Choctaw Nation with a talky Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf to find Cheney. It is a simple story that the Coens, their cinematographer Roger Deakins and their cast have invested with a primal grandeur. This is a movie for the ages.

Of course Jeff Bridges is brilliant, he almost can’t help it. His Rooster Cogburn is a very long way from the traditional concept of a hero, but Mattie’s assessment is correct: this is a man with true grit. Matt Damon is the Jason Bourne of big-name actors: quietly, lethally efficient even when he’s playing a man who won’t shut up. Josh Brolin is a worthy addition to the Coens’ pantheon of criminal idiots, and an almost unrecognizable Barry Pepper shows up to menace the heroes. Hailee Steinfeld (yes the Filipino-American girl) makes her film debut in True Grit, and the moment she appears onscreen with her tight braids and nerdy self-possession she has us rooting for her. This is a movie full of excellent actors and she carries it.

That is a lead performance. Hailee Steinfeld should be in the Best Actress category.

For years we have been inflicted with cute, cloying, vain, insipid, inexplicably famous teenage non-talent; Hailee Steinfeld redeems adolescence. Her Mattie Ross is strong-willed, intelligent, courageous, articulate and steadfast, and we do not doubt her for a second. That baroque dialogue sounds natural coming from her. And yet this is not a young girl trying to act like an adult: we never forget that she is a 14-year-old. We have witnessed something wonderful. Bravo.