True Grit (1969)

Sometimes the remake is better. Take “True Grit,” the beloved John Wayne Western, with The Duke as U.S. Marshal Rueben “Rooster” J. Coburn, the one-eyed crusty, drunken, quick-draw bounty hunter who is hired by a 14-year-old girl to capture her father’s killer. If I ever saw this version in its entirety before, I can’t recall.

The verdict on the 1969 bag of oats: Eh. No, really, eh. This “Grit” follows the same plot as the 1968 book and 2010 script, and is likewise more interested in character study than who did what to whom. But it has that studio-controlled, scrubbed-clean sheen that kills so many period pieces of older Hollywood epics. Y’know – men ride in the wilderness for days on end, and still sport freshly pressed clean clothes. No dirt to be found. Yeah, it works in a live-action cartoon such as Errol Flynn’s “Robin Hood.” But not here. It’s a glaring fault, as clueless as the studio lighting during the “night” scenes.

As a star, Wayne is always magnetic. But the man always also has just one speed, blow-hard tough guy, and there’s just no texture there. Ever. As the teen, Kim Darby is truly great in body language and voice, but she looks every day of her (then) 20-plus years. As a Texas Ranger, singer Glen Campbell is an embarrassment. He cranks out his lines as if he’s auditioning for the part.

There’s much great humor and some subtext here, apparently taken from Portis’ book, but any human grit or frailty is buried under painfully upbeat music and that aw-shucks squeaky-clean smile optimism that many conservatives (read the “American Spectator” review) point to and say, “See! America was really like that!” And I call it bullshit make-believe, rose-tinted Santa Claus and Peter Pan fantasies.

The 2010 Coens-Jeff Bridges remake is better acted, darker, more wickedly funnier and grittier in every way. It comes closer to the Truth. I bet the Wayne version felt old upon release. Am I un-American? Eh. Original version: C+