True Grit & Rooster Cogburn

Westerns are not the usual place that you find many sequels and the few that are made don't usually match up with the original very well. Some times the character is just so strong that that no matter how long the time between films the story comes off without a hitch and it fells like you had just seen the first film. The biggest roles and most memorable characters that John Wayne played were in the westerns and for me none stand taller than Rooster Cogburn. Years ago when I was a young boy my grandfather, who was a big Wayne and western fan, use to sit down on Saturday afternoons and watch these movies, and where there was only one TV in the house I had to watch what he watched. I fell in love with a lot of the older movies then, but with all the different films that I saw, Wayne's just stood out from the rest.
True Grit - A young girl searching for the killer of her father hires the one eyed whiskey drinking U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn to bring him in to justice. One of the surprising performances in this film comes from Robert Duvall as Lucky Ned Pepper and the other from Glen Campbell as the Texas Ranger. Both roles, along with Kim Darby as the young girl, helped Wayne's portrayal of Cogburn to the point of winning an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1969. With the steady stream of action sequences this film moves along at a very good pace and before you know it the final battle is upon you and your cheering on the good guys.
Rooster Cogburn - While on the trail of some bandits who hijacked a shipment of nitroglycerin, Cogburn pairs up with a head strong missionary who is after the bandits for killing her father. Katharine Hepburn as the missionary, Eula Goodnight, shows that no matter what time period she is acting in she comes across as if this was the life she was living. There is just as much action in this film as in the first film and here Cogburn's character releases more information about his background, which shows that there are ore layers to this person than can be examined. The cunning and skill of Cogburn's character is evident in both films but comes out more here showing some of the tricks he had learned during the War.
With six years separating the two films you'd think that the sequel would lose the appeal of the audience, but with this being John Wayne he carries the whole thing as if he walked from one set to the next. The scenery in both films just takes your breath away and shows how beautiful this country is. With the success of these two films it's a shame that there wasn't another film made, would have been nice to see more stories about this character, and his life in the West. For years I had only seen True Grit, until a friend let me borrow the sequel so that I could finally see the whole story. And now that I have I don't think I could watch the first movie now without wanting to see the second.