The greatest movie ever made..!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The character of Mattie Ross played by Kim Darby is horrendous. Kim looks way too old / too tall to be a teenager, and too old to be wearing a shorter skirt (for the time period). Her hair is too short and the clothes she wears seem so "wrong". It's unbelievable that a female teenager would be so "forward" for the time period. I can't understand why Kim Darby was cast in the role. She ruins the movie. The wardrobe department gets zero stars for how they dressed her.Glen Campbell better suited to singing than acting. The starting song before the movie also doesn't fit the movie either.All in all these two characters/actors were so wrong/didn't work. Made the movie a pain to watch.John Wayne was fine, but in my mind, not worthy of an Oscar for this movie.

I never liked John Wayne as a kid and never much liked westerns. This movie didn't turn me around but let's say that it made me stop and change my mind for 128 minutes. I saw it on TV in Spain a couple years go (Valor del Ley is the Spanish title) and I was struck by the majestic beauty of the locations. I also went back and reread the fantastic book upon which the film is based and from which comes every great word of dialogue.The book is narrated in the no-nonsense, straightforward fashion you would expect from a good journalist, as Portis was before he gave it up to write fiction full-time. He has a great ear for dialogue and he obviously researched the speech of the era as there are many phrases and words that are now out of use or just impossible to invent. Folks just plain spoke different back then, something Portis was keen on having us hear. Take this little exchange:"I don't believe you have fifty dollars, baby sister, but if you are hungry I will give you supper and we will talk it over and make medicine. How does that suit you?"I said it suited me right down to the ground.I just don't think you could make up a line like "right down to the ground." That Portis was a newspaper reporter shows in his attention to details like this small one (but all details, big and small, are important, of course). I suppose that I take more notice to Portis' ventures in language because I am up to my own eyebrows learning Spanish and I subconsciously am translating everything I hear and read into castellano, as it is called here, mostly. And evidently Portis was a bigger fan of the Duke than I because he wrote the character of Rooster Cogburn with him in mind. The author also had a fair ear for humor of which the novel and both movies abound.I found myself one pretty spring day in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in need of a road stake and I robbed one of them little high-interest banks there. Thought I was doing a good service. You can't rob a thief, can you? I never robbed no citizens. I never taken a man's watch." "It is all stealing," said I."That was the position they taken in New Mexico."At least both sets of film makers have enough wisdom to recognize the wisdom in the book.The original movie certainly isn't perfect, not by a long shot. But any criticism of it would be like criticizing the way people talked back in the 1880's. Films are different today, mostly better in my opinion. There are some problems in the 1969 version with some of the side characters and bad acting. The musical score is sometimes bombastic and annoying. The first five minutes which recount the murder of Mattie's father are tiresome and have been wisely excluded in the Coen brothers' remake. More than anything the 1969 movie is absolutely gorgeous from start to finish. The old movie has a better and more satisfying ending than the new one which follows the book more closely. The old movie is pure Hollywood, not always a pejorative, especially in this case."You're too old and too fat to be jumping horses." "Well come and see a fat old man sometime."

Six people a year are killed by Rooster Cogburn. He tortures his prisoners for information and enjoys it. Nowadays, we see these traits in characters such as Aldo Raine (Inglourious Basterds). Stupid and sadistic he is not move by his heroism but by his own perversion. Interestingly, in accordance with the interests of the State, this places them on the side of the good guys.John Wayne victims are men who have already been judged by facts. There is not any doubt about its guilt. They committed a crime and cease to be human, if they ever were. Wayne expresses this dehumanization of the "other" and his role as executor. In one of the best scenes, he sees a rat in his Chinese friend's pantry: "Mr. Rat, I have a written here that says you are to stop eating Chen Lee's cornmeal forthwith. (to Mattie) See? He doesn't pay any attention to me. (shoots the rat) You can't serve papers on a rat, baby sister. You either kill him or let him be."

A young woman (Kim Darby) hires a one-eyed drunken marshal named Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) to track down her father's killer. A cocky Texas ranger (Glen Campbell) tags along to collect a reward. One of John Wayne's signature roles and his only Oscar winner. He's great in this but he certainly had many other performances he deserved an Oscar for more. The rest of the cast is good. Robert Duvall is a fine villain. Kim Darby is an acquired taste and one I was not particularly fond of the first time I watched this. She's grown on me over the years. Glen Campbell is a little wooden. Elvis Presley almost played this part. It would have been interesting to see him and Duke together in a movie. The script is excellent and the direction solid. Followed by sequel "Rooster Cogburn" with Katharine Hepburn. The recent Coen brothers' remake is not bad but doesn't improve on this film in any way. So do yourself a favor and stick with the original.