Perhaps the Coens’ most commercial film, but only in a good way, I hasten to add. Great performances all round (particularly the girl, Hailee Steinfield), lots of tension and thrilling landscape photography, and – in my perhaps controversial opinion – miles better than the original. Apparently they went back to the book rather than the Wayne/Campbell movie for inspiration, and certainly the dialogue is as absorbing (thought with much less swearing) as that in the TV series Deadwood.
My only complaint was that Bridges growls with such whisky-soaked conviction that I had trouble hearing what he was saying occasionally. But don’t let that stop you going to see this at the cinema – it really is one of those movies that would loose at least half is power on the small screen. M & I both came out of the cinema buzzing with that feeling that we’d seen a classic movie which both evoked many of the greats of the 1960s and 70s but also felt wholly contemporary.