10 Movie Remakes Better Than The Original

2. True Grit

True Grit Jeff Bridges
Paramount Pictures

Rooster Cogburn may not have been the most iconic role in John Wayne’s filmography, but it is fondly remembered. After all, who doesn’t look at a sequence of a bounty hunter firing both a repeater and revolver on horseback - at the same time - and consider it nothing short of amazing?

Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2010 remake of True Grit may lack the same exuberant approach to gunfighting, but it does succeed where the original didn’t, namely in its ability to convey the tone intimated by the source-material’s title.

Wayne’s performance in the original 1969 film was revered, and it stands out today as one of the actor’s more unique performances, namely for the fact that Cogburn didn’t possess the usual stoicism of the actor’s previous roles. Be that as it may, it’s hard not to watch the original True Grit and see it as just another Wayne western, sporting a usual tale of revenge, shootouts, and frontier justice.

The remake, on the other hand, sets out to tell a truly grim tale. Interwoven throughout is the Coen Brothers’ signature style, but the remake is also buoyed by two magnificent performances, namely Jeff Bridges as Cogburn, and Hailee Seinfeld as Mattie Ross, the young girl who seeks revenge against the man who murdered her father.

[EP]

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