The Coen brothers weren't going to improve on the original adaptation of Charles Portis' book, the wonderful 1969 film starring Kim Darby and John Wayne. They just weren't. But perhaps they thought it was worth updating anyway, both to give it a little more realism and to restore the hard truths of the novel. Well, it is grittier, and it does end the way the book did; otherwise, it's the same thing, only less entertaining. Precocious fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) hires trigger-happy Federal Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track the man who killed her father, figuring either to kill him or bring him back to face justice. They're joined by a brash young Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) who is after the same man for an entirely different murder. The first time we hear Cogburn, he's in an outhouse. There's nothing wrong with that -- except that it warns us that realism isn't necessarily a virtue. Bridges speaks as though he still has the memory of marbles in his mouth, and Damon, after nearly having his tongue severed, speaks pretty much as he did before. Steinfeld just talks a lot. They all speak in the formalized way of the characters in the novel, as if the Coen brothers failed to realize that what made sense for a book written in Mattie's voice didn't make so much sense for a movie with actors playing the individual parts. For all that, this isn't a bad movie -- it retains some of the humor of the original and the book on which it's based, and the story itself is good -- but the drearier tone combined with characters who aren't as likable make it noticeably less enjoyable.
+++
The Coen brothers weren't going to improve on the original adaptation of Charles Portis' book, the wonderful 1969 film starring Kim Darby and John Wayne. They just weren't. But perhaps they thought it was worth updating anyway, both to give it a little more realism and to restore the hard truths of the novel. Well, it is grittier, and it does end the way the book did; otherwise, it's the same thing, only less entertaining. Precocious fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) hires trigger-happy Federal Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track the man who killed her father, figuring either to kill him or bring him back to face justice. They're joined by a brash young Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) who is after the same man for an entirely different murder. The first time we hear Cogburn, he's in an outhouse. There's nothing wrong with that -- except that it warns us that realism isn't necessarily a virtue. Bridges speaks as though he still has the memory of marbles in his mouth, and Damon, after nearly having his tongue severed, speaks pretty much as he did before. Steinfeld just talks a lot. They all speak in the formalized way of the characters in the novel, as if the Coen brothers failed to realize that what made sense for a book written in Mattie's voice didn't make so much sense for a movie with actors playing the individual parts. For all that, this isn't a bad movie -- it retains some of the humor of the original and the book on which it's based, and the story itself is good -- but the drearier tone combined with characters who aren't as likable make it noticeably less enjoyable.
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++++ Grit, like any other admirable human quality, comes with a price, and the truer it is, the higher the cost. That's what Charles Portis seemed to say in the book on which this film is based. But that's not what Hathaway and screenwriter Marguerite Roberts say, and perhaps that's what's wrong with this movie -- if indeed there is anything wrong with it. This, from start to finish, is a wonderful film. Kim Darby shines as young Mattie Ross, a girl whose strength, determination, and moral fiber won't let her take the murder of her father sitting down. John Wayne is so perfectly cast as the toughest, most trigger-happy Federal Marshall Mattie can find to track the killer that he won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance. Glen Campbell, better known as a singer, of course, is just fine as a Texas Ranger who is after the same man for reasons of his own. With great dialogue (often lifted straight from the novel), lots of humor, and plenty of action. But, for what it's worth, this is a softer version of Portis' book, one with, ironically, a bigger heart that may be, deep inside, the littlest bit hollow. Also with Dennis Hopper and Robert Duval. Remade in 2010 by the Coen brothers. ++++ Fourteen-year-old girl hires the toughest Federal Marshall she can find to help her track down and bring to justice the man who killed her father in cold blood. Somewhat to her consternation, their party is joined by a handsome Texas Ranger who has been after the killer for months for another murder. Young Mattie Ross is a force to be reckoned with -- self-possessed, strong-willed, and educated (by cowboy standards); she is, however, utterly humorless, and much of the charm of the novel, which is told by Mattie a quarter century after the fact, lies in the way she is perceived by others, and how those perceptions fly right over her head. The style is simple and formalized, giving the humor an understated quality that can creep up on you, but also making the book highly readable (it's a pleasure, for instance, not to have to slog through a lot of broken English and cowboy slang). The marshal is Rooster Cogburn, a fat man with only one good eye, who early on seems to recognize something of himself in Mattie's indomitability. Ultimately, it's all about Mattie, but Portis never wanders far from the plot, which makes this thoroughly enjoyable book exciting as well as funny, and even a little touching. Made into a film the following year starring Kim Darby and John Wayne. First Line People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. +++++ Mismatched group of men and women, each for reasons of their own, crowd together aboard a stagecoach during an Apache uprising, headed for the distant town of Lordsburg. Star-making vehicle for John Wayne, whose character, an outlaw named Ringo, is introduced with an iconic zoom that has lost none of its dramatic power but now generates an additional sense of pleasurable pride -- in Wayne, America, and American film. Joining Ringo are a lady, an alcoholic doctor, a gambler, and a prostitute, among others. Ultimately, a transcendent Western that engages on every level, with simple yet sharply drawn characters, believable dialogue, a tense, well-balanced narrative, and impressive direction and visuals -- with the latter not being entirely confined to the harsh beauties of Monument Valley (one shot, for instance, of a long hallway where Ringo and Dallas, the prostitute, converse is memorable not for its metaphor but instead for its stark and prosaic beauty). Based on "Stage to Lordsburg," a short story by Ernest Haycox. The Story & The Adaptation The story by Haycox, quite good in its own right, was originally published in 1937 in The Saturday Evening Post. It's about a gunslinging man on his way to the town of Lordsburg to repay a "debt" -- that is, to kill two men over some unexplained grievance. To get there, he must join a group of strangers aboard a stagecoach and travel through Apache country. Among his companions is a prostitute, scorned by the others, who piques his interest. Typically the other way around, here it is the relationship between these two characters that serves as the comfortable backdrop for the journey itself, which Haycox describes sparingly yet evocatively, imparting always a sense of constant threat and, above all, movement. Dudley Nichols' screenplay captures all of this magnificently, and the only real deviations from the story lie in the necessary expansion of the secondary characters to flesh it out to feature length. *** Disappointingly episodic western loosely based on the outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid). Parts of it work marvelously well -- especially a long sequence during which Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) are tracked by a group of lawmen with almost super-human powers of pursuit -- but that's the problem: it's a piecemeal effort without any overriding theme or story, other than a couple of guys on the run. Katharine Ross plays Sundance's girlfriend who also has a thing for Butch (accounting for the famous bicycle sequence featuring B. J. Thomas singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"), but again it leads nowhere. (A later musical interlude, this one featuring a lot of bah-buh-dum lyrics by The Swingtones is much less successful.) Great chemistry between Newman and Redford, however. In all, a could-have-been that later was, in another George Roy Hill film, The Sting. *** Ex-lawman takes up the badge again to go after the men who tried to lynch him for a crime he didn't commit. Good Western despite script that refuses to stay on point, partly because Clint Eastwood plays this character so convincingly and partly because the story's digressions are interesting in themselves. It's a pleasure, for instance, to see both sides of the issue of capital punishment treated with respect. Excellent supporting cast includes Pat Hingle as a hanging judge and Bruce Dern as one of the lynch mob. ** Sparse, British-made Western starring Raquel Welch. As Hannie Caulder, she swears revenge on the three not-too-bright brothers (Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Srother Martin) who killed her husband then raped her. Robert Culp, a fast-drawing bounty hunter, teaches her how to shoot. Despite being billed as "the first lady gunfighter," Welch never comes off as tough, driven, or angry enough to carry the film, which leaves it in the hands of the bumbling brothers, who are played more for comedy than anything else. Robert Culp does what he can to save the picture, but he's only a second banana. With hippie-colored credits, Christopher Lee as a gunsmith, Diana Dors as a madam, and the pointless addition of a mysterious man in black. Uncanny Balderdash How the man (it must have been a man) responsible for this poster wasn't hooted and howled out of the boardroom is a mystery. Surrounding a woman, dressed and posed in a sexually suggestive manner, with the three men who murdered her husband and serially raped her as if they were all part of the same happy gang must rank as one the top five most insensitive and offensive advertising blunders in all of cinema. That said, I think the movie would have been improved if, instead of being in tight pants and a poncho for most of the film, this is how Ms. Welch had been featured. |
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