I saw the original when it came out and had read the novel the year before when it was serialized in the old Saturday Evening Post. I thought then that Wayne overdid the humor bit but did not feel anything was lost by excluding Mattie's religiosity. I feel different now.
I watched the original the night before I went to see the Coen version and reread the novel.
Here is my problem with this one: Steinfeld is an improvement over Kim Darby but still lacks something central to the novel. Mattie was a fourteen year old religious oriented kid who was very hard. This kid isn't. She is not convinciing to me as a single minded vengeance driven hard as nails teen girl.
She's better than Cupcake Darby but is not hard enough.
Much of the charm of the novel was the interweaving of the life attitudes of the characters. The Ranger was ate up with the Texas mystique and was a comic character to Rooster and Mattie. He redeemed himself at the end in their eyes.
Mattie saw Rooster as a complete waste as a human but a useful tool and necessary one in her scheme for justice. Rooster saw her as an exemplar after he got over her pain in the butt ways.
The guy in the film who plays Stonehill is as good as Strother Martin was in the original and the lawyer cross examining rooster at the start is better.
Also worthy of note is the very understated score by the guy who does all of the coen films. He did Fargo, etc and even got a credit from the Coens in No Country after he told them the film was perfect without any music. That film has no score but does have a score credit. Dono if there are other instances of that happening. He does the score here and it aids the film without getting in the way.
My favorite review of the original film noted that Glen Campbell had never acted before and his slate was still clean. He was terrible. Not as bad as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but terrible.
I watched the original the night before I went to see the Coen version and reread the novel.
Here is my problem with this one: Steinfeld is an improvement over Kim Darby but still lacks something central to the novel. Mattie was a fourteen year old religious oriented kid who was very hard. This kid isn't. She is not convinciing to me as a single minded vengeance driven hard as nails teen girl.
She's better than Cupcake Darby but is not hard enough.
Much of the charm of the novel was the interweaving of the life attitudes of the characters. The Ranger was ate up with the Texas mystique and was a comic character to Rooster and Mattie. He redeemed himself at the end in their eyes.
Mattie saw Rooster as a complete waste as a human but a useful tool and necessary one in her scheme for justice. Rooster saw her as an exemplar after he got over her pain in the butt ways.
The guy in the film who plays Stonehill is as good as Strother Martin was in the original and the lawyer cross examining rooster at the start is better.
Also worthy of note is the very understated score by the guy who does all of the coen films. He did Fargo, etc and even got a credit from the Coens in No Country after he told them the film was perfect without any music. That film has no score but does have a score credit. Dono if there are other instances of that happening. He does the score here and it aids the film without getting in the way.
My favorite review of the original film noted that Glen Campbell had never acted before and his slate was still clean. He was terrible. Not as bad as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but terrible.
