John Wayne is one of those old movie actors whose work I am, by and large, rather indifferent to. I don’t think he’s bad. He, like a lot of actors even today, had a stock role he could play and play well enough. When he stuck to that role, he generally did fine. But the movies of his I liked best are the ones where he has to share the spotlight with someone else giving what I’d consider an even better performance. Case in point: my favorite movie of his is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but that’s more due to Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin. Wayne did, of course, win an Oscar for the first time he played US Marshall Rooster Cogburn in the original True Grit. I actually quite liked the more recent one from the Coen Brothers with Jeff Bridges in that role, but what about the older movie?
I mean, the Coens made their version closer to the original novel, so I suspect I know what changes might have been made to this particular adaptation.
Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) wants justice. Her father was gunned down in the street by a hired hand, and that rotten weasel buggered off to Indian Territory where the local sheriff has no jurisdiction. So, Mattie offers to hire the services to the toughest, meanest US Marshall in the area: Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Wayne), a one-eyed old man who prefers his drink and doesn’t initially care to help the girl much at all. Mattie eventually convinces him, but then a Texas Ranger named Le Boeuf (Glen Campbell) comes along, likewise looking to find the same killer and take him back to Texas. Mattie insists the man be hung in the same town her father died in, and she isn’t one to take “no” for an answer when the two men opt to try leaving without her.
As it is, the killer (Jeff Corey) has hooked up with viscous outlaw Lucky Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall), a heavily wanted man with something of an honor code, possibly the most fascinating character in the movie as Rooster can somewhat negotiate with the man despite the fact Pepper himself is wanted by the law. Mattie is a stubborn girl, often in a childish manner, and she’s way out of her element in this manhunt. Will she find the justice she craves?
OK, so, did Wayne deserve an Oscar for this role? Not knowing who else was even in the running that year, I honestly didn’t think his performance was all that special compared to, well, everything else I’d ever seen him in. He’s rough when he first appears on screen, but has scenes where he shows some genuine tenderness to Mattie well before the end of the movie when he has to make a hard ride to get her some much-needed medical attention. But it works: this movie is a total showcase for Wayne and his talents as an actor. But I don’t think it shows Wayne stretching himself in any way either. It might have just been some kind of lifetime achievement award given to a performer whom the Academy figured finally deserved it.
The same could be said for True Grit as a whole. I don’t think it says anything new about the Western genre. It doesn’t even suggest that the frontier that made men like Rooster Cogburn who they were is dying. The world is the same. It’s just that Rooster himself is now an old man. There’s nothing revolutionary here compared to, say, many of the Westerns of Sam Peckinpah. But what is here is a very well done, exciting, tight piece of moviemaking in the classic Western genre. That could describe all of Wayne’s best-known works, and there’s a good reason for that: they generally are just well-done films.
Grade: A-
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