Film: "True grit"

TITLE: "True grit" / GENRE: Western movie / FORMAT: DVD /

The title to this blog is "A Swede on American Culture" and few things are as American when it comes to culture as movies are. I for one loathe modern Hollywood productions, but I think old movies like this one, the original with John Wayne in the lead, embodies Americana like Merle Haggard does.

Therefore, I have decided to branch out from just writing on music to write a bit on films as well.

The story is simple, classical western stuff, someone gets murdered and his family, in this case a young and angry daughter, seeks out revenge. The daughter, Mattie, is angry, but sympathetic all way through the movie. It's girl power decades before The Spice Girls. A bit of Loretta Lynn's Fist city embodied, though she remains a Christian young girl who refuse to accept her accomplices drinking habit.

The other lead part is played by the legend himself, mr John Wayne. Wayne plays "Rooster", a hard federal marshal and gun fighter, who drinks too much and shoots before he talks.

Rooster, Mattie and Labeef ( a Texas ranger) goes out on a manhunt to catch or kill a geezer called "Chaney", who was employed by Mattie's old man, whom he killed under the influence of alcohol. Labeef plays a slick, but deadly Texas ranger, who starts out courting Mattie, but she will have none of his antics and after a few conflicts, the three decide to hunt Chaney down together. Throughout the film, there a refreshing feeling of underlying conflict between the three.

I think this is one of John Wayne's better movies, cos it dives into controversial issues and "Rooster" is portrayed unsentimentally, when it comes to his drinking, as well as his habit of shooting first and asking questions later. Central to the film is the question of justice. You may point finger at me and criticise me, cos I am a pro-lifer and pro-death penalty kind of man. However, I think there should be justice done when someone has killed someone. True, the film is stereotyped and the bad guys are classical bad guys, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that this a film with a message of justice and that message never goes out of date.

This is not just one of the better John Wayne flicks I've seen, but also one of the best Western movies I've seen. Bleedin love it.

Therefore, a good, almost perfect flick gets 91,3% in rate of satisfaction!