Rooster Cogburn

From Wikipedia:

In the early morning of August 21, Quantrill attacked Lawrence (Kansas) with a force of 450 raiders. Though Senator Lane, a prime target of the raid, managed to escape through a cornfield in his nightshirt, Quantrill's Raiders killed between 140 and 190 men, dragging many from their homes to kill them before their families. When Quantrill rode out at 9 a.m., most of Lawrence's buildings had been burned, including all but two businesses; his raiders looted indiscriminately and also robbed the town's bank. The raid would become notorious in the North as one of the most vicious atrocities of the Civil War.

GOODNIGHT: Marshal, is your eye bothering you? I could sooth it with a poultice.

COGBURN: No, thanks, Ma'am. It's past help.

GOODNIGHT: Was it a hunting accident, Marshal?

COGBURN: You might say that. Huntin' Yankees. I lost it in the war, riding with Bill Anderson and Captain Quantrill. Times have sure changed. Now I'm workin' for a damned Yankee.

GOODNIGHT: But you're still hunting, sir.

COGBURN: I guess I like Marshalin' better'n anything I've done since the war. I like buffalo huntin', but them big shaggies is almost gone. Damn shame. I was skinnin' buffalo at Yellow Horse Creek, Texas. Pay was great, but I couldn't stand that open country.
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There's plenty to like about ROOSTER COGBURN: John Wayne & Katherine Hepburn are as solid as one would expect those two professionals to be, some of the jokes really snap, and the story is a comfortably predictable quest tale that makes for a pleasant evening of viewing. Unfortunately, however, the movie can't overcome the awfulness of its titular character.

It's been said that the worst kind of evildoer is the man who doesn't know that he's doing evil. Cogburn is still proud of having ridden with Quantrill, one of the most vicious murderers of the Civil War, and his only qualm about partaking in the great buffalo slaughter was that he ran out of buffalos. He's a self-satisfied S.O.B. who wouldn't know introspection if it invaded his village, burned half of it down, and slaughtered its inhabitants in their nightclothes because they opposed slavery. I get that he's supposed to be an endearingly cantankerous old man, but that only goes for audiences who don't know their Civil War or Western history. Before this revelation, the movie had had me rocking along pleasantly enough; after, I had to make a conscious effort to remain engaged.

This particular DVD presentation of ROOSTER COGBURN makes remaining engaged even harder because it looks terrible - it's like an old VHS copy of a bad print, with out-of-focus shots, poor color correction, graininess, and plenty of flecks and scratches. Clearly, Universal didn't care enough about the movie to provide it with a good transfer, and the results detract from the overall experience.

I've been in a John Wayne mood lately, but ROOSTER COGBURN, didn't quite do it for me. I think I'll try my luck with EL DORADO.