True Grit

John Wayne finally won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Rooster Cogburn, an old and tired U.S. Marshal. He is hired by a fourteen year old girl, Mattie(Kim Darby) to track down Tom Chaney, her father's killer who is on the run with Ned Pepper(Robert Duvall) another notorious outlaw who has had previous run ins with the lawman. Though uninvited, Mattie buys a horse and follows Rooster and a Texas Marshal, La Boeuf(Glen Campbell) whose motive is a $1,500 reward for the capture of Chaney. The three plan to stay at a supposedly empty cabin, only to find two horse thieves resting and waiting for Pepper, who shows up the next day but escapes after a bloody gunfight killing two of the gang. More gun battles between the good guys and bad guys occur, in typical western fashion, and Mattie is bitten by a rattlesnake, causing Rooster big trouble in getting her to a doctor in time. I won't give away the ending,, but it is satisfactory.

John Wayne is cult. His characters (mostly in Westerns) were upstanding men, that fought the good fight. They might have been hard on the outside, but they always had a soft spot inside. The hard on the outside is also true when applied to the Oscar statue. John Wayne received one, although he played in countless movies/westerns. And the one he received it for, is this little gem. His character is really well defined and his conversations with other characters (the girl mainly) are just awesome. I haven't read the book, but the story flows really nicely and you can see why the academy finally "broke" and gave John W. his long deserved Academy Award. Great acting, great visuals, the movie is really done nicely. It might have some pacing problems, but overall if you like Westerns, you will like this too.

Very entertaining movie, and not simply a shoot-em-up western. There is a decent plot and reasonable depth of character. I am not a huge John Wayne fan - I generally find his performances one-dimensional and wooden - but he shines here. He deserved his Best Actor Oscar, his first, after two previous nominations. The supporting cast are great too, especially Glen Campbell, Kim Darby and Robert Duvall.

Surely one of the purest westerns ever made, a simple tale of a lawman tracking down an outlaw. This film is raised way above the norm in almost all respects: The photography is superb, with the hills, mountains, valleys and forests being the real stars; the acting is first rate, with not a weak performance in sight from even the lowliest minor character; the direction is well paced as we ride along with the 3-person-posse through the landscape and experience the minor twists of the actual hunt, as well as the evolution of the relationships between the group. The episode in which they take over a cabin by a stream and then ambush the following villains is even better than the well known finale. Why this film hasn't had more votes and a higher rating in imdb is a complete mystery to me. I'm English, and I always thought the Americans really loved their westerns and John Wayne in particular. Can anyone explain please?