Based on original novel by Charles Portis
1968
“True Grit” was published in 1968 and was made into a movie in 1969, starring John Wayne, Kim Darby and a cast that included Robert Duvall, and Dennis Hopper. The book and the movie both became instant Western Classics. Well that was some time ago, a little over 40 years by my reckoning. The story, the dialogue, the characters and the actors imprinted themselves on the American phsyche as one of the last great Westerns. The Machine and the cyber age had been coming and now they were here. Techno action and anti-heroes would soon fill the screen
Flash forward to the present and it’s time to saddle up again. The Coehn Brothers (No Country for Old Men”, “Fargo” and other off-the-wall movies such as “Burn After Reading”) went to remake the classic “True Grit”. Many times it doesn’t work, this remaking of a classic. Gilding the Lily, and touching up perfection and all of that. But this time it does. Jeff Bridges as Rooster G. Cogburn perhaps does not equal John Wayne, the screen legend. But he does one up him in one way. We forget we’re watching Jeff Bridges. John Wayne always consumed the role more than the role consumed him. We never forgot it was the “Duke” up there on the screen. The new protaganist is truly a fouteen year old girl just like the character. I liked her better than Kim Darby, who I suspect at the time was not fourteen years old at all. You feel the new Mattie will grow up to be a beautiful woman, yet she has the indominitable aura that makes the movie believable. Josh Brolin as Tom Chaney (the man who murdered Matties Father) does a masterful job of slow witted villian, acting against the leading man type that he usually plays. The cinemotagraphy is mah-velus! The outside shots were done in Texas, which looks a lot more like Oklahoma than does Colorado. Well worth seeing…again…for the first time….
Wikipedia Book Plot Summary>>
Here’s a trailer
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