Paramount Pictures | 1969 | 127 mins. | G
Sixty-two year-old John Wayne’s Best Actor Oscar in 1969, for True Grit has generally been considered as a belated, long-overdue ‘career’ Oscar award or ‘sentimental favorite’ award. That reasoning is hard to argue with—long a box office superstar, True Grit was Wayne’s 139th film, and only his second nomination. When you look at his competition in the Best Actor category that year– Richard Burton in Anne of the Thousand Days, Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, Peter O’Toole in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy, it’s hard to honestly say that John Wayne was the best actor of that year. However, there is little doubt that Wayne’s performance in True Grit is one of the most memorable of his career.
The plot is fairly straightforward, as most good westerns tend to be. In post-Civil War Arkansas, Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), a no-nonsense, sensible, and controlling 14-year-old, sends her father Frank Ross (John Pickard) off with spending money to buy breeding horses. Taking along shifty ranch hand Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), Frank arrives in Fort Smith, and tries to keep the gambling Chaney out of trouble, but the shifty Chaney loses control and shoots Frank dead in the street. Accompanied by hired hand Yarnell (Ken Renard), Mattie arrives at Fort Smith to retrieve father’s body, and to see what’s being done to find his murderer.
Once Mattie learns that Chaney has joined up with “Lucky” Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and his gang, hiding in the Indian Territory, she realizes it will take a U.S. Marshall to run Chaney down. Seeking a man with “true grit,” she finds her way to one Marshall Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn (John Wayne), said to be the most determined marshal in the state. Spitfire that she is, Mattie demands that Rooster help find her father’s killer—for a fee.
Joined by another sheriff seeking out Chaney (Glen Campbell), the two men initially don’t want the young girl trailing along on the mission into dangerous territory, but after a while, they realize that she can take care of herself out in the wild.
Adapted from Charles Portis’ novel, and directed by Henry Hathaway (How The West Was Won, Nevada Smith), True Grit has some of the same jokey, colorful dialogue that can be seen in another western released the same year, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. From the start, it appears John Wayne relished his role. Cogburn, a decaying, alcoholic gunfighter, is a burlesque of his role as Cole Thornton in Howard Hawks’ El Dorado from two years earlier. Wayne even dares to spoof his strident right-wing politics — he shoots a rat by reasoning, ‘You can’t serve papers on a rat. You either kill ’em or let ’em be.’
Glen Campbell, who needs some acting practice, finds it difficult to make the dialogue convincing but Hathaway pulls him through. A young Kim Darby is excellent as the determined Mattie and the cast is rounded out by solid supporting performances from Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin, Jeff Corey, John Fiedler, and Hank Worden.
For fans of the Duke and the western genre, True Grit is a must have. It delivers tension and drama, gunfights and action all with a subtle touch of humor that make it entertaining to watch.
There’s an occasional softness to the 1.78:1 image, which doesn’t do justice to the beauty of the authentic Western scenery. There’s also some video noise and traces of film grain which serve to tarnish the picture quality somewhat, despite the high bitrate. Blacks are also lean on nuance. Despite all of this, the transfer is still a step above previous DVD releases.
As is often the case, the original musical score (another gem here by Elmer Bernstein) is the most obvious beneficiary of the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 remix, although at times the audio quality seems strained to its limits, and not really ready for high resolution. There’s also some subtle environmental presence in the rears, and the soundfield comes to life during shootouts, but don’t expect to be ducking as bullets whizz by.
The special features here are all borrowed from the 2007 DVD edition: First, a full-length commentary track, featuring Jeb Rosebrook, Bob Boze Bell, and J. Stuart Rosebrook. It’s informative, although some of the conclusions reached about the significance of the film may be stretching things. Next, there’s a four minute featurette, True Writing that looks at the original source novel by Charles Portis. Working With the Duke is a ten minute featurette that pays tribute to the Duke by some of the people who worked with him in films. It’s entertaining, without being sappy. Aspen Gold: Locations of True Grit is an interesting return visit to the small Colorado town that served as the backdrop for the film). And The Law and the Lawless, a five minute featurette that looks at the real-life lawmen and criminals who populated the Old West. The original trailer is included, in HD, as well.
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