CastJeff Bridges
Matt Damon
Josh Brolin
Hailee Steinfeld
Barry Pepper
Screenwriters
Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
Directors
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Running Time
110 minutes
Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross's father has been shot in cold blood by the coward Tom Chaney, and she is determined to bring him to justice. Enlisting the help of a trigger-happy, drunken U.S. Marshal, Rooster Cogburn, she sets out with him -- over his objections -- to hunt down Chaney. Her father's blood demands that she pursue the criminal into Indian territory and find him before a Texas Ranger named LeBoeuf catches him and brings him back to Texas for the murder of another man. (Paramount Pictures)
I've seen the original many times although not recently and think it's fantastic. When I heard about this remake I was dubious but I had read or heard somewhere, maybe from Jeff Bridges in an interview, that it would be based more on the original book than the first film and so be substantially different. When I saw the trailer it seemed to be following the plot of the first film exactly but it was getting glowing reviews and award nominations. So anyway I've seen it and it is pretty much a total copy of the original just not as good in most if not all respects, time after time I kept thinking this scene had been done better in the original. A particularly odd thing about Hailee Steinfeld, who was good and I guess she was closer in age than Kim Darby to the character, was how she seemed to be as tall as all the other actors so nullifying the sense of her being really young.
