Week #5 True Grit

“True Grit”, is a story that takes place in Arkansas.  A fourteen year-old girl named Mattie Ross seeks retribution from her father’s murderer. Mattie Ross’ father sold ponies because he heard that it was a good trade to be in and be able to raise a family on.  He had hired a man, Tom Chaney, as help.  He was from Louisiana.  He was a short man with a cruel feature and who carried a rifle.

One night Tom Chaney got drunk and lost all his money in a card game in a barroom.  He wanted to get his money back because he felt cheated.  When he went out with his rifle, Mattie’s father tried to stop him.  Tom Chaney ignored him and instead shot Mattie’s father in the head with his rifle.  He leaves town with his rifle and later joins an outlaw gang.

So, what will become of Mattie when she hears about her father’s death? Will she go after the man who used to work for her father and kill him for revenge? The book describes Mattie’s ordeal to find and kill her father’s murderer.

The movie made from the book starts in the Old West as the narrator, Mattie Ross, talks about her father’s death and the revenge to kill Tom Chaney.  In the movie, the town people treat her like a kid.  She tries to get help and ends up paying $50 to a marshal to hunt Tom Chaney and to bring her along.  Even though the marshal tells her to stay home because she had no right to come along with him, she still goes along.  In the story, there is another character named La Boeuf.  He was a bounty hunter from Texas. He wanted to bring Tom Chaney back to Texas for other crimes. Towards the end of the movie, Mattie ends up killing Tom Chaney with his own rifle to the chest.  As the gun backfires, she falls into a snake hole. The hole had a dead body and was full of rattlesnakes.   She gets bit on her arm by a rattlesnake. The marshal rescues Mattie out of the snake hole.  Mattie tells the marshal that she was bitten.  Both of them race back on Mattie’s pony towards the town.  Suddenly the pony starts to slow down and hits the floor. The marshal ends up shooting Mattie’s pony with his gun and gets Mattie angry.  Yet, he still had to get her into town as fast as he could.  He ends up carrying her the rest of the way.  The last scene shows Mattie narrating about ordeal to kill Tom Chaney and how she loses her arm. 

The “True Grit” movie followed the book very closely.  I think there were just a few minor details left out and it did not impact the movie that much for it to not become a great movie from a book.