I watched the original last week on Film 4

I watched the new one the other night

The original is a reasonably entertaining 60s western – but really not all that

The new one is very good indeed – the action scenes are the same, but with some variations around who is where when, which improve things and keep it interesting

Considering the stuff around it being a new version of the book and not a remake of the John Wayne film some of the performances are very similar. The guy who sells/ buys horses and the character played by Robert Duvall in the original – both actors in the new one seemed to be playing very close to the original film’s performances

i’m glad there were a couple of negative reviews towards the end of this thread as i was starting to think i was on my own. saw it at the weekend and wasn’t very impressed at all. it looks good and all that but i really hated the fact that i couldn’t understand what was being said half the time because of their accents. the first half was pretty slow then i thought it was going better after she crossed the river but then it slowed right up again. the finale was pretty good though.

Good film (though far from being an epic of the genre), beautifully shot, with some great set pieces – and there’s an excellent (& nicely scripted) turn from Hailee Steinfeld as the avenging kid.

By no means as weirdly hypnotic as No Country for Old Men, but that’s hardly surprising.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy2-abqR8B4&NR=1[/video]As said if your going to watch one John Wayne film make it The Searchers. The Shootist is also a fav of mine but I think you have to be a bit of Western obsessive like my to understand it fully.

Fast forward to about 50seconds to see best film ending ever:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkNXhTSTmbY[/video]