True Grit, not to be confused with the later 2010 re-make, was released in 1969. John Wayne, in one of his greatest roles, is Marshal “Rooster” Cogburn, an ornery ex-Confederate lawman on the Reconstruction border between western Arkansas and the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Based on the novel by Arkansas writer Charles Portis, True Grit, like most great “Westerns” is really a “Southern.” A feisty young girl enlists Cogburn’s reluctant aid for a mission into Indian territory. There follows an adventure that is well known. The 2010 remake of True Grit, athough widely praised, is much inferior. Everybody in it acts and sounds like they come from New York and the young lady’s Christian faith is entirely suppressed. A sequel to the original, Rooster Cogburn, released in 1975, in which Wayne (Cogburn) tangles with the Yankee schoolmarm Katherine Hepburn is not bad.
CNW
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