Christianity Today:
Lest this all sound rather heavy, I'll reiterate: This movie is absolutely delightful, the dialogue so rich in humor and fine characterizations, the actors moving through this thing so effortlessly. Bridges is a riot, and impressively unlike the character he played in The Big Lebowski, while Damon proves himself once again to be both a stalwart character actor and an impeccable comedic one. But it's Steinfeld who most amazes; she is not a child actor who's simply given room to be a child, but an actual performer, playing a character. That the movie is filmed beautifully, or that the score—based on old-timey hymns, actually—is perfectly evocative … well, it's a Coen Brothers movie. These things don't really need to be said.
What might need to be said is this: For all its pleasures, there is a sort of lingering melancholy that makes the movie stay with you. In the theater, I thought it was a zany Coen comedy along the lines of Raising Arizona or Lebowski, but as I reflected on it later I realized it to be a much sadder and wiser film than it initially seems. It's a movie about death, and about justice and revenge. It's also a movie about manhood, as seen through the eyes of a young girl whose only examples of manhood are limited and flawed. (Aren't we all?) We see these men through her eyes, and we see how it shapes her into the woman she becomes. In some ways, the way all this plays out is a little bit subversive for a Western; of course, it's also about as pure and unironic a genre picture as these filmmakers have yet made. In other words, typical Coen Brothers.
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