Admittedly, this is a late movie review. It’s probably more helpful for people like me who don’t like to go to the movies, but wait until they are out on Pay Per View or DVD Blu Ray.
I finally watched the remake of True Grit last night at home, from the comfort of my couch. No overpriced snacks, no obnoxious “youts?”, no annoying ladies whispering in the row behind me.
On to the movie itself. It’s a much darker film than the original. Some of the banter between the characters in the original was lighter in nature than the exact same dialog between the characters in the new version. This doesn’t make one better than the other, it just makes them different.
Different is the key to enjoying this movie. Jeff Bridges is not John Wayne, and he doesn’t try to be. His Roooster Cogburn is more irascible than Wayne’s, but no less enjoyable. Comparison of his portrayal to Wayne’s is inevitable, but not fair. Different actors look at the same character from the different perspectives. Bridges does a good job with this character and will hold up well in a side by side comparison. Not better, but just as good. Only different.
Matt Damon as LaBoeuf is more of a parody than Glen Campbell’s. Or maybe I should say he played it a bit more for camp than did Campbell. Ultimately that works, but at first he’s a bit hard to take. Maybe he softened his approach as the film progressed or maybe I just took his character for what it was.
Hailee Steinfeld got a lot of good reviews for her portrayal of Mattie Ross, but I don’t see her characterization much, if any, different than Kim Darby’s in the original. Both delivered their dialogue in a staccato, matter of fact, manner.
The remaining actors gave credible performances in their more or less minor roles. In fact, it seems that the casting people and director did their best to get people who resembled the original actors to the extent personal and that they pretty much recreated the original roles.
As a movie, this was a darker, more gritty, production. It was also more gory, which is the way modern movies seem to be done. All of the violence was pretty much within the context of the plot, except for the dead man hanging in the tree and the “Bear Man”. I have no idea what those were doing in the movie as the little bit of the story that was advanced could have been done without those two scenes. At least I think so.
The plot was pretty much the same, although several people noted that this version was more faithful to the novel than the original. The biggest difference was in the end, which was, like the rest of the movie darker than the original. We’re left to wonder what happened to LeBeouf, there is no remeeting of Rooster and Mattie, and Mattie seems unhappy with her lot in life. I guess that’s just the way movies are these days.
It’s a credible movie, entertaining, with good portrayals and an actual plot, not just a thin plot hung on some great CGI. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the original dozens of times, but I like that one a bit more than the new version.
The ending of this new one adheres closely to the novel. LaBoeuf disappears and is never heard from again, and Mattie hunts Rooster down only to be told of his death a few days before. Mattie by this time owns the bank in her town, and is rather self-righteously smug about that fact.
The two movies were about equally faithful to the novel, but in different ways. The novel had no hanging man/Bear Man sequence. Neither movie got Rooster exactly right; he wore no eye patch, but had a white, rolled-up eye instead; he also was clean-shaven save for a walrus mustache. Mattie points out that he looked like President Grover Cleveland, and further pointed out that most men of that period resembled Cleveland.
In the new movie Damon’s Texas/southern accent isn’t worth crap, and he comes across as Ashley Wilkes from Gone With the Wind. In the novel he comes across as reasonably tough (the Texas Rangers of the period didn’t accept pussies) but didn’t have the war experience that Rooster did (working for Confederate General Edmund Kirby-Smith was pretty much a REMF posting.)
Nice synopsis. Damon being from the Boston area would have a hard time trying to get a southern or Texan accent right. Of course depending on what part of Texas he was supposed to be from it could be either southern or Texan.
Maybe someone can explain the dead man/Bear Man scenes as they still baffle me.
I think I read that the hanging man/Bear Man scenes were simply the result of an extra actor being so picturesque that his role was expanded into a bit part.
The book is well worth acquiring. As good as the movies are, they didn’t get all the wonderful content of the novel.