Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy on a mission of 'justice', which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, 'Rooster' Cogburn because he has 'true grit', and a reputation of getting the job done.
True Grit (1969) is best remembered for John Wayne's Oscar-winning performance as Rooster Cogburn — a wonderfully gruff, self-mythologizing portrayal that earned him his only Academy Award. Kim Darby holds her own as the determined Mattie Ross, and the interplay between the leads gives the film much of its charm. The plot is a fairly conventional revenge-and-justice Western, competent but not groundbreaking. The cinematography is handsome in the Technicolor tradition but unremarkable by the standards of the era's great Westerns. The ending, while satisfying in its Western conventions, is sentimental rather than striking. Its novelty lies chiefly in the feisty female lead and the darkly comedic tone, which distinguishes it somewhat from standard oaters, but it remains firmly within genre tradition.