Jeff Bridges snarls his way through True Grit creating a new iconic character that may upstage the Dude and the Duke. In this new adaptation of the book by Charles Portis, Joel and Ethan Coen have created a Western with a starkly realistic feel, from the harsh and lonely landscape to the drifters that populate it. Bridges plays Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn, a U.S. Marshall who is hired by the fourteen year old daughter of a man murdered by a drifter named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin, in Neanderthal guise) to track him down and bring him to justice, which in this case means hanging. The girl, Mattie, is played by Hailee Steinfeld in a powerful performance. After convincing Rooster to take the job, they are joined by a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (and pronounced LaBeef) played by Matt Damon.

The unlikely trio heads north across the autumn Arkansas landscape. It is shot by the Coen brothers in a harsh, high-contrast light that beautifully emphasizes its starkness and lonliness. At times reminiscent of Ulysses (and the Coen’s own tongue-in-cheek adaptation O Brother, Where Art Thou?), they encounter the occasional odd character (or corpse) drifting across the landscape like flotsam on the ocean: a man hanged from a tree, to high to reach; a self-styled doctor clothed in a bearskin willing to trade a toothless corpse; and “a Baptist and a son of a bitch” holed up in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, cooking beans.

The Coens portray these characters in ways that are both believable and outlandish at the same time. Brolin’s Chaney is made to seem almost Neanderthal as he contemplates with jutting chin and single brow “how to improve his situation”. He travels with a gang of bandits including one man who (for reasons not explained) acts like a goat. And yet the movie never feels like it is pushing too hard or reaching unfairly for caricatures. Mattie herself is well-educated and literate (perhaps the most literate character we see), and one of the most satisfying scenes in the movie takes place when she bargains with a businessman over the purchase of a horse. But the movie as a whole is also both satisfying and fascinating, as much for the portrayal of three singular characters and their interactions with each other as it is for the relatively simple chase they engage in.

Love and Other Drugs is a rarity among Hollywood romances: the characters are far from perfect, their relationship feels real, and throughout the movie I was not sure how things would end up or even how I wanted them to end up. It does an admirable job of capturing the complexities of real life and relationships.

Anne Hathaway plays Maggie, a 26-year old aspiring artist who has early-onset Parkinson’s Disease. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, an aspiring pharmaceutical rep whose actual aspirations are unclear even to him. Jamie’s father is a doctor who always expected him to follow in his footsteps, and his younger brother Josh is an unemployed millionaire, having hit it big in software development and sold out for $35 million. Oliver Platt and Josh Gad give strong supporting performances, mostly in the form of comic relief, as Jamie’s salesman partner and brother, respectively. George Segal and Jill Clayburgh have brief appearances as Jamie’s parents, and Hank Azaria plays a disillusioned doctor, ready to write prescriptions based on the perks he’ll get from the drug reps.

Jamie goes about his life as though he has something to prove, but he’s not entirely sure what. The one thing he unquestionably excels at is seducing women. When he meets Maggie at a doctor’s office, he meets a woman who sees him for what he is, and that’s fine with her. Afflicted with an incurable disease at a young age, she is happy to engage in mutual sexual escapism with Jamie.

At this point one might expect the movie to follow a traditional path of redemption for Jamie, but the screenplay, credited to a trio (never a promising sign) including the movie’s director Edward Zwick, takes a more sophisticated approach, exposing the ugly realities of Maggie’s condition. This makes the choices made by both Maggie and Jamie much more believable and poignant.