Gritty

We've been watching a lot of gritty films recently, mostly because those are films that garnered attention for male actors this past year.  Tonight we watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - a poetic Western where the audience must suffer with the misery of betrayal.  The brutality in the movie is not abundant, but what is there is accentuated by the blunted, pure force of guns and bullets that had not yet been refined to weapons of stealth and sexy-precision.  Guns sling slugs that pound more than they stab.  Gaping wounds result and blood pools instead of trickles.

On Monday, we watched Daniel Day-Lewis' powerful role in There Will Be Blood, which - as you could well predict - has its own fair share of pooling crimson and buried bodies.

Now that you think we're very morose around this house, let me just say that we saw Eastern Promises a few weeks ago.  And I was definitely in favor of the Coen's taking best picture for No Country for Old Men.  

All of these are great gritty movies, but where would they rank along with some of the other classics?  What do you think?  What movies come to mind when you think of gritty, white-knuckle drama?  Here's my top ten (in no particular order):

1.  The French Connection:  Gene Hackman's pretty much pissed off at the world in this one, and I would be too if I had to be a tough street cop with the nickname "Popeye".  This movie - along with Steve McQueen's Bullit and Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry films - defines gritty, especially given the matter-of-fact cinematography Hollywood was in love with throughout the late 60's and 70's.  Guns echo over whole cities.  It seems that Hollywood was determined to cast the chaotic cultural clashes of the 1960's by reframing the Western genre within urban jungles.

2.  Collateral:  I just love this movie.  Set within Los Angeles, this Michael Mann film made a star of Jamie Foxx and allowed people to see another side of Tom Cruise.  The grittiness of this movie is set early on when a hired-assassin (Cruise) drops a man two stories on top of a cab.  Throw in a great car wreck, close-quarters shootouts and Vincent (Cruise) as a walking wound by the end of the film, and you've got true grit.  Mann mixes all gritty motifs:  Samurai culture, Westerns and Cop Drama.    Interesting note:  Javier Bardem appears briefly in this film as the shadowy, super-cool, Mexican drug king, Felix. 

3.  No Country for Old Men:  Yes, that is the same Javier Bardem who walks around Texas as some form of menacing death known as Anton Chigurh (be it person or power we know not).  This movie highlights two other key pieces of gritty movies:  terse and tense speech and the agonizing "bandage your own wounds" scene.  Ouch.

4.  Dirty Harry:  Come on, this scene pretty much defines gritty ... once again, notice how much elements of Cowboy/Western movies come out in the cinematography.  

5.  Unforgiven:  This relatively modern Western starring Eastwood and Morgan Freeman also includes Gene Hackman.  "Any man who doesn't want to get killed better step on out the back."  Here's a key scene. 

6.  The Departed:  I don't know anyone who saw how this one was going to end, but you knew from the beginning this Boston mafia movie would end with plenty of shooting and some double-crossing.  Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio show off some of their own grittiness against some seasoned tough guys.  And, in the end, someone ends up taking a bullet between the eyes - no mercy, no hesitation, just the cold reality of death and life, losers and winners.

7.  Tombstone:  Any movie that starts out with a reckless, vile group of outlaws gunning down a bride, a groom and a priest has got to be gritty.  But, if you think the bad guys are iron-guts, just wait until the fury of justice is unleashed through Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) and Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer).  

8.  Chinatown:  This is why I never visited Chinatown, never mind all the scary Hello Kitty merchandise!  Basically the same substance of those other gritty-city dramas, this film also has a bit of film noir mixed in to add mystery to the mayhem.  Still, the ending (a regular punch to the gut) tilts the scale over to true grit.

9.  Road to Perdition:  You don't think of Tom Hanks as being a man of grit, but this surprising film sets Hanks in mob-infested Chicago at the beginning of a new century.  This movie highlights another common gritty theme:  good guys have to wade through crap - becoming viciousness - in order to release others.

10.  The Untouchables:  Al Capone gives a bat to the head, and a shootout breaks out that sends bullets hurtling past a baby-carriage free-falling down marble steps.  De Niro is Capone; Kevin Costner is Elliot Ness.  Every great American city deserves its own gritty movie, a film that shows what it took to bring order to burgeoning chaos and violence.  Force has to overcome force to subdue a gritty world.  

So, there they are.  My top 10 ... although, don't kill me if I change my mind by morning.  At least give me the honor of a duel.

What are yours?

Wes