True Grit

The film "Maršál", "True Grit", or "Opravdová kuráž" will be known by today's viewers, especially the younger generation, including myself, mainly in the new version by the Coen brothers. However, "True Grit" is primarily a novel by Charles Portis, which was first filmed in 1969 by Henry Hathaway (don't look for any connection to Anne Hathaway). The story tells of how a determined fourteen-year-old girl decides that she must exact justice at all costs. The murderer of her father must be avenged. Justice doesn't have much power, so she tries to convince the one-eyed marshal (hence the Czech title) Rooster Cogburn to help her. She knows what the killer looks like, so together they can track him down. However, Cogburn is a drunk and not exactly the kind of man who would believe a little girl, let alone rush into action with her. But then the Texan ranger LaBoeuf also enters the game, who also seeks the same killer as the girl Mattie. After many adventures, this trio sets out to hunt down the outlaws. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2013/02/marsal-1969-75.html (03/22/2013)

Fat old man... unfortunately, this is not only true of John Wayne's rich corpus, but also of the rich corpus of this nostalgic Western spectacle, which, when seen through contemporary eyes, pays the price for the damn heavy buttocks. Despite a few nice spots, it's just a poster-rich horse show for retirees that looks very much like a museum specimen, especially after the dark Old testament remake of the Coens’. (02/16/2011)

For a John Wayne western, True Grit is unconventional, but for the time when it was made, it is almost too conventional. The genre revisionism that came into fashion in Hollywood at the end of the 1960s consists primarily in putting Wayne’s tough-guy character on a more cynical level. A slightly more cynical level. Though he drinks and shoots animals, inside he is still the nice uncle from the American Midwest. The substantial update doesn’t mean that there is more space for the female character, since she is immature and naïve, like the women in most westerns. True Grit ultimately commands the greatest respect where it doesn’t strive for innovations – the monumental panoramas of the American landscape, Elmer Bernstein’s soundtrack (try not to think of The Magnificent Seven when you’re listening to it) and the final shootout, when I wanted to believe that Wayne was really giving chase on a horse instead of a motorised cart. At that moment, I understood why he HAD TO get an Oscar. 65% (02/05/2011)

It's been a long, long time since I've seen a western with such a great story and great dialogue. A wickedly funny road movie of a wise-cracking girl, an aging alcoholic sheriff, and a ranger who come to like each other over the course of two hours while constantly on the hunt for scumbags hidden somewhere inside Indian territory. It's thrilling, it's funny, it's tough (especially at the end) and uncompromising and it's pretty damn good. The Oscar for Wayne was definitely well deserved (riding a horse with a repeater in one hand and a revolver in the other is really SOMETHING), but none of his fellow actors lag even an inch behind him.__P.S. The scene with the hanging of the criminals (conceived as a performance for the big and the small) gave me an air of Peckinpah nostalgia.__P.P.S. I'm looking forward to the Coen brothers' remake even more now. (12/18/2010)

Wayne doesn’t steal this movie, but there simply isn’t anybody else of any interest. Campbell as a non-actor with that hair tsunami on his head can’t say one line right without it sounding stilted (and also his character is awfully flat) and Kim Darby is really annoying, although Mattie is a wonderfully powerful role. But I completely understand why, after appearing in this movie, this “actress" never made it out of second rate TV productions. Only Duvall makes any impression at all, but the five minutes he gets on screen just aren’t enough. And then we have Wayne who isn’t particularly impressive either, but holds the movie’s head above water. Primarily after the incredibly slow-moving first fifty minutes before they set out on the vendetta. In the second half Wayne is given further support from the camerawork which relished in beautiful technicolor landscapes shots. To tell the truth, if this movie hadn’t been woken from bored lethargy of unfunctional squabbling and turned into a real western half an hour before the end, I would have given it even fewer stars. (01/01/2011)