(2010) More faithful to Charles Portis's novel, the 40-year old Mattie Ross (Elizabeth Marvel) narrates the opening (her father's death at the hands of Tom Chaney, who then stole two gold pieces and a mare) and closing scenes (unmarried, looking for Rooster, who would have been nearly 80, in a Wild West Show with Cole Younger) from 1904, a quarter of a century after the principal events of directors/writers Ethan and Joel Coen's reimagining the gritty western tale of a headstrong girl, a mordaciously coldblooded and fat old marshal, and a Texas Ranger in pursuit of outlaws.

Since much of the action and dialogue in the two cinematic versions are similar, I'll focus on some of the differences, beginning with Mattie's (Hailee Steinfeld) questioning of the undertaker's charge for her father's coffin and then her spending her first night in Fort Smith in the company of three corpses.

Following her witnessing with Yarnell the hanging of three men in front of the courthouse, she attends a trial (presented at greater length without grandstanding) where she first lays eyes on slovenly and surly, growling and gruff, Deputy Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), with a black patch over his right eye (opposite from John Wayne's wearing it over the left) having been informed by the sheriff that he's "the meanest" but not "the best" marshal available.

In her dispute with Col Stonehill, desiring cash in return for the ponies her father had purchased as well as retrieval of the saddle and payment for the missing mare, the fourteen-year-old displays her tenacious determination to prevail along with a law-student's grasp of legal language and maneuver. When she returns later to purchase the pony she names Little Blackie, Col Stonehill is fearful of trading with her again. She rarely wavers or shows weakness: "I will have my way."

At the boarding house where she shares a bed with Grandma Turner (who in turning at night pulls away the blanket), she's confronted in the bedroom on the second morning by LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), wearing his spurs, where they exchange unpleasantries after she rejects his proposal that they combine efforts. Leaving Mattie behind, Cogburn, who knows the territory, and LaBoeuf, armed with a Sharp cavalry carbine, who knows Chaney, ride off together during snowfall in hopes of earning a large reward, but she on her spirited steed, swimming the river, catches up only to get a switching across her behind from LaBoeuf. (Unlike in the 1969 movie, there's no suggestion of a romantic attachment gradually developing in LaBoeuf for Mattie.)

Soon, however, the partnership between the two men snaps with LaBoeuf's parting shot: "You graduated from being a marauder [with Quantrill] to a wet nurse." The Coen brothers added the strange scenes (not in the novel) from Mattie and Rooster's coming upon a man hanged high in a tree (which Mattie's obliged to climb and cut down the corpse to see if it may be Chaney because Cogburn says, "I'm too old and fat") to the encounter with the gray-bearded dentist wearing a bearskin with its grizzly head.

After Mattie helps Rooster smoke out Emmett and Moon from the dugout, of the violence that follows, Joel Coen quipped of the finger-chopping scene (more graphic than in the earlier movie), "Well, you got to cut some limbs off," to which his brother Ethan adds: "Basically, it's 127 Hours." Not quite, but a few digits remain on the table.

Afterward, while Rooster and Mattie are outside, waiting in ambush for the arrival of Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper, no relation) with Chaney (Josh Brolin) and their gang, LaBoeuf shows up alone to confront the desperadoes. In the ensuing fusillade, the Texas Ranger receives a rifle wound through his shoulder (Cogburn's bullet passing cleanly through) and gets his tongue mangled. In the funniest scene, Rooster, nearly falling off his horse, and LaBoeuf engage in a sharpshooting match with a whiskey bottle and cakes of cornbread.

Concluding that the wild-goose chase has become futile, their quarry long gone, the lawmen once again split up, with Rooster's dismissive remark of being with "a harpy in trousers and a nincompoop," while Mattie, disillusioned with Cogburn, begs LaBoeuf to continue the pursuit with her. "The Texas Ranger presses on alone," says LaBoeuf of himself: "The trail is cold, and I am considerably diminished."

Remaining in the marshal's company, using his trick of looping a rope on the ground around her to keep away rattlesnakes, she goes to sleep discouraged only to accidentally come upon Chaney the next morning when going for water at the river. Taken captive after she plugs, but not fatally, her father's killer, many of the particulars of the ending have been changed from director Hathaway's movie of nearly 40 years before.

When Cogburn, reins in his teeth (similar to his telling of taking on seven men alone in New Mexico), charges Pepper and his three ruffians ahorse, he's firing a pair of six-shooters at them. Though she falls into the pit, after discharging her father's Army Colt revolver, as in the book Mattie accidentally disturbs a nest of rattlesnakes from their gruesome winter abode, and Rooster cuts her hand to suck venom from her snakebite (a technique not advised today by medical experts).

Others I won't mention to avoid revealing too much of the denouement, though Rooster, who in this rendition becomes a better man (whereas John Wayne's Cogburn pretty much is what he is from start to finish), doesn't hang around after Mattie recovers her health.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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