There is a moment in “True Grit” where the 14-year-old heroine correctly deploys the word “depredations”. She does this with cool authority, and narrates the film with the vocabulary and elan of an NPR Cowboy Poet (actually, much better than that guy- I kind of hate him). I have a soft spot for the lost art of heightened language, and I have always loved the Coens’ loving attention to clever and anachronistic dialogue. Hy’s expression of despair that his barren beloved’s “womb was a rocky place, where my seed could find no purchase” in “Raising Arizona” ranks as one of my favorite moments in the history of Hollywood patter. “True Grit” is lousy with such sublime turns of phrase and I could love it for that reason alone.

The film’s other pieces are in fine fettle as well. Jeff Bridges is well-cast: his Rooster Cogburn is a much fuller character than John Wayne’s, funny and morose without being corny. Matt Damon’s facial hair makes a worthy comic foil, and Hailee Steinfeld’s performance as Maddie Ross is note-perfect. The cinematography is beautiful, and the supporting parts are doled out to the kind of character actors who make the most of them.

This remake hews closer to the original film than you might expect from the Coens, and the unambiguous moral universe of American Westerns might be a little direct for viewers not steeped in the canon. “True Grit” is a fable, like most Westerns: it’s a bedtime story about how great we were once. The good guys are good, even when they’re a little bad. The bad guys are bad enough that we don’t feel bad about how they die. The right thing to do is clear, and things turn out how God wants them to, at least in the end. The Coens do not take the liberties you might expect with this dimension of the story, with the result that you feel the way you’re supposed to feel when the lights come up.

No major flaws. Whatever you were planning to see instead is probably worse, and you’ll increase your word power. See it.