Friday, January 07, 2011

True Grit

Howdy, partner. I was just down to the café—you know, the internet café next door to the saloon, where I seen that for the last two weeks the people of this prideful and cantankerous country have plunked down an average of $6 million a day in bright yellow California gold pieces to see a western, the cowboy movie True Grit. Now who woulda thunk it? But there it is.

And darn if it ain’t a familiar story, a good deal like the one old John Wayne told us maybe forty year ago. Some things ain’t changed since then—say you and your horse are moving across the meadow at a good clip and the feller with the eye patch happens to shoot you and you go flyin’ off the horse, well you should try if you can not to land on your head. And just like in Indiana politics, you should keep a sharp eye on anybody who says, “Let me do the talking.” And when a feller points out a deep, dark pit that you should step around, well that’s still good advice today. But when a pit appears in a story, somebody’s bound to fall. So there it is.

And when you’re in a little flea-bitten western town like Fort Smith, Arkansas, which happens to be my birthplace, a story might start out to be about justice and bringing a murdering thief back to be hung by his neck until he is quite dead, thank you very much, but once you ride your pony across the Oklahoma line into the Indian territory, justice starts looking more and more like revenge. Law officers don’t wear badges on their coats and nobody attends to the niceties of reading out a person’s rights, whatever that might be. You can settle a crowd of bad guys good and proper if you shoot a couple of ‘em real quick.  This is just practical and you’re a fool not to consider it. So there it is.

And a good western story can have a streak of humor as wide as the St. Joseph River, don’t you know, involving an outhouse or maybe out-talking a citified lawyer or getting the better of a horse trader. It’s a pleasure, too, when the bad guys are interesting, as they are here. One of ‘em can’t go no more’n about a minute without speaking of his own self-pity. Another one has just the slenderest trace of scruples that Marshall Rooster Cogburn remembers in a pinch.

And don’t let nobody tell you that Jeff Bridges don’t put John Wayne to shame in this movie, ‘cause he does, and the young girl who hires him to carry out her rightful vengeance is a little dynamo herself.  Robert Duvall in the old movie is about the only actor who isn’t matched or shown up by his partner in the new one.

If you like rootin’ for the good guys and aren’t going to fret over-much about any shortcuts they take on the path to justice, and if you think actors ought to have witty lines to say when they aren’t busy shooting long rifles from behind a rock or fetchin’ dry wood for the campfire or dealin’ with the irritation, the downright irritation I should say, of having brought a mere slip of a girl out into the wilderness ‘cause she won’t take no for an answer, then you ought to see this movie on the big screen. When you do, walk slow out of the theater and tighten your jaw and you turn to your buddy and say, “When you have True Grit you don’t need no stinkin’ badges.” So there it is. Now start the music.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on January 07, 2011 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Arts & Entertainment • Books & Films • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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