Rooster Cogburn

Plot synopsis:
Because of his drunkenness and questionable use of firearms, aging U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) has been stripped of his badge. But he's given a chance to redeem himself after a village in Indian Territory is overrun by a gang of violent, ruthless criminals, who've killed an elderly preacher, Rev. George Goodnight (Jon Lormer). His spinster daughter, Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn), wants to join Cogburn to track the criminals down, becoming his unwilling partner. But Rooster must use care, because the criminals, led by Hawk (Richard Jordan) and Breed (Anthony Zerbe), have stolen a shipment of nitroglycerine. Rooster rides by the following morning, while Eula and Wolf mourn their friend's and family member's deaths. Rooster convinces them to come, but he attempts to drop them off at Bagby's Store, but the trio follow him close behind. Meanwhile, in a scuffle between two bandit men, one of them is wounded by a stab wound. The wagon also hit a rock, but the men manage to fix it. Rooster, Wolf, and Eula stake out at a crossing in the woods, barricading the path with logs. The bandits are stopped and Rooster threatens to blow up the wagon unless the men dismount, which they do. A man attempts to shoot Rooster in the back, but Eula makes the perfect shot and kills him. Another man tries the same, but is killed instantly by a bullet to the chest. Rooster cries out "Posse!" and his two partners fire into the air, causing the men to actually think he has a posse, which they flee. Rooster captures the wagon.
The men carry on back to their leader, Hawk. He orders Breed to investigate the tracks, which he finds out there was not a posse, much to Hawk's disdain. Hawk, Breed and the bandit which got stabbed ride on to town, while the other men attempt to fix the axle, which they eventually do. The stabbed man cannot make it, causing Hawk to shoot him, saying "Let the buzzards have him" to Breed. That night the men kidnap Wolf, saying they will let him go if they give him the wagon, but are actually planning to get the wagon back, and to kill the three heroes. Wolf shoots the man who is holding him with the 5-shot Pepperbox handgun Rooster previously gave to him to protect himself and Eula if need be. He gets back to camp safely. Rooster has him hitch up the horses, while the bandits retreat because he fired the Gatling gun at them. They escape safely. The next day, Rooster "borrows" a raft from an old man, stashing as much dynamite as possible on board. The men attempt to ambush the three, but they fire the gun at them and they manage to escape around the corner. Breed and another bandit set up a trap across the river to capture Rooster and his gang. As the bandit is about the kill Rooster in cold blood, but Breed shoots him in the back in return for Rooster saving his life years prior. That night, Breed returns to the outlaws camp and Hawk realises that the other bandit must be dead. After checking Breed's gun and seeing one expended bullet, Hawk knows Breed killed him. Hawk then kills Breed by kicking down into a rocky ravine. They encounter massive rapids the following morning, causing enormous waves to fall on the raft, practically sinking it. They get through safely, though at the cost of losing the Gatling gun. They realize Hawk is planning to hold them up upriver, so they dump the dynamite overboard. They pretend to surrender, saying Rooster is sick. He jumps up and shoots the explosives, causing a massive wave to knock the riders over and blowing up the bandits. A few days later, Judge Parker gives Rooster's job back.

Tags: revenge, murder

Review:
As the gang of outlaws bid a hasty retreat, they stumble upon Eula (Hepburn), her minister father, and several Indians including a teen-aged boy named Wolf.The plot is simple and had their characters been played by any other actors besides Wayne and Hepburn, the film would have been mediocre at best.
Well, maybe it's just good acting.In any event, the film is a nice way to pass some time for those unfamiliar with Wayne or Westerns and a must-see for all Wayne and Hepburn fans..
That's not saying a whole lot since this was a vehicle created for the two stars and only the two stars in this film could have brought it off.It was a happy marriage of convenience with John Wayne's character of Rooster Cogburn from True Grit being so popular that a sequel was inevitable given Wayne's health holding up and Katharine Hepburn looking for something she could co-star with Wayne.Hepburn was one of John Wayne's biggest boosters of his talent, politics aside.
Coming from her, I've got to believe that's the best compliment she could offer.Wayne as Cogburn is on the trail of a gang that massacred an army patrol and stole a gatling gun and nitroglycerin for use in a planned bank robbery.
The gang headed by Richard Jordan with Anthony Zerbe who used to scout for Wayne go to an Indian settlement with a missionary school headed by father and daughter preacher and teacher Jon Lormer and Katharine Hepburn.
The gang shoots up the place and kills Lormer.When Wayne comes he gets a lot more than he bargained for when he finds himself saddled with Hepburn and young Indian boy Richard Romancito.
They accompany him on the trail of Jordan and his gang and get enough adventure to last a lifetime.Everyone compares Hepburn as Eula Goodnight to her portrayal of another missionary, Rose Sayer in The African Queen.
Don't get me wrong, True Grit is a good western and worthy of its classic status, but I've always found John Wayne's first go round as Rooster Cogburn to be uneven, at times colorfully into character but just as often just playing John Wayne.
Forget the plot, it's passable enough but very much secondary, this story gets along strictly on the strength of the two lead characters and it's worth seeing again and again just to watch these two Hollywood legends banter and spar in their one and only movie together.This was the first John Wayne film I ever saw in a movie theatre (I was 9 years old in 1975) and it made me a lifelong fan.
The film is a first-rate western , is the following-up to ¨True grit" in which Wayne won an Oscar , Academy Award , for his acting.
The movie is a remake from "African Queen " in which Hepburn did couple with Bogart , here Wayne and Katharine hand similar roles , even there is one dangerous runaway by a river.
John Wayne and Hepburn set out in pursuit the evil people : Richard Jordan , Anthony Zerbe and Jack Colvin .
Although not a cowboy movie lover, I am an avid John Wayne fan, and I consider this his very best work.The relationship between Rooster and Miss Eula has such chemistry you just can't take your eyes off the screen.
Someone in Hollywood had the bright idea of taking the leading character from "True Grit" and putting him in a story redolent of "The African Queen", casting a much older Katharine Hepburn, then experiencing a revival in her career, in the same part she played opposite Bogie.
Hired to track down a vicious gang, federal marshal Rooster Cogburn reluctantly lets a missionary and a Native American lad accompany him after their mission is ransacked by the gang in this belated sequel to 'True Grit'.
The villains are not particularly interesting and the plot is no great shakes; in fact, 'Rooster Cogburn' feels more like a remake rather than sequel to 'True Grit' at times with Hepburn also seeking vengeance for a father killed.
And, they didn't even try to disguise it very well, as Kate Hepburn pretty much plays the same part she did in the original AND John Wayne is playing a part in a movie that should have been re-titled "TRUE GRIT PART II".
This trivia tidbit tells it all:-- Director Stuart Millar insisted on so many takes that eventually John Wayne snapped, "God damn it Stuart, there's only so many times we can say these awful lines before they stop making any sense at all." --A better director might have been able to get truer performances out of these great stars, but Millar, a fine producer but apparently a talentless director, got little more than worn pennies.
In African Queen there was some tension in the initial relationship between Hepburn and Bogart, two odd fish brought together, but both transform the other, so you get personality development in the film.But in Cogburn there is no personality development, and way too much chatter that makes you want to fall asleep.
Rooster Cogburn, unfortunately, barely rises above a B movie, even with the heavy lifting of its stars.The low point in the movie is a plastered Wayne doing skeet shooting and never missing, but who can't stand up on his own, and then drives off with a wagon full of nitroglycerin, which could have blown up even with the most careful, sober handlers.
It is really that bad.Still, John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn could have been great in a Western together.
Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Clint Eastwood to name but three have all improved with age but both Wayne and Hepburn did not with this one.For large parts of the film it looked like they were simply reading the script and both of them were clearly having difficulty in merely getting up and walking.
If you do want to see these stars at their best, watch Wayne in "True Grit" and Hepburn in the "African Queen" instead..
John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn in a movie called `Rooster Cogburn'?
Top Drawer All The Way. Rooster Cogburn is top of the line entertainment of the "old school" of movie making.Every character, every scene and every piece of dialog is top drawer story telling at it's best.
Suffice it to say, Rooster Cogburn / The Shootist are fitting movies to end John Wayne's career...a career that defined the Western male lead.Wayne's character epitomizes the raw American Individual Spirit that takes on the task because it is noble and right, regardless of the odds.No other actors other than Wayne and Hepburn could carry this movie...a movie made in the twilight of each of their careers.
as much as i liked True Grit,i was much more impressed with this followup.it's much more epic, a lot more fun,has a great story,and plenty of action.the witty banter between Cogburn (John Wayne)and Eula(Katherine Hepburn)is is great fun to watch.Hepburn and Wayne really work well off each other.as great as the movie was,it's easy to see that Wayne was on his last legs physically at times,and in pain due to the cancer that would eventually take his life.but,he stuck it out and put in a good performance.when you add it all up,this was a much better movie than i expected it to be.for me,Rooster Cogburn is a well deserved 9/10.
Unfortunately, the chances are that they had more fun making this film than many of the audience will have watching it.What we basically have here is a remake of The African Queen disguised as a sequel to True Grit, and both the previous films were better.
The minister's daughter Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn) insists on joining Rooster with Indian boy Wolf.Wayne and Hepburn have some good banter but it overtakes the movie.
The best asset of the film is easily the performances and chemistry of John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn, who are wonderful individually and together, and I was also impressed with the handsome cinematography, beautiful scenery and rousing score.
"True Grit" is one of the finest Westerns ever made, and definitely features John Wayne's best performance.
Unfortunately, the sequel to "True Grit", titled "Rooster Cogburn" is not a film that works out so well.
True, John Wayne was still top-notch as his ever-famous character and Katharine Hepburn, one of the best actresses of all time, was great in her role, the film is spoiled by others factors.The plot of "Rooster Cogburn" is not particularly original, but then again, neither was "True Grit".
They were just there to be there.I watched it for three reasons: John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, True Grit sequel.
That would be John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn, two of the greatest stars of all time.
The sequel to "True Grit" (far from a masterpiece itself) has John Wayne returning as the titled one-eyed U.S. marshal.
They accompany him, despite his complaints, to catch the gang.After giving him the Oscar for True Grit (mostly a sentimental vote I feel, but I don't know who else was up in that year) someone clearly felt that Wayne deserved a rerun of his character and thus this film was born.
Zerbe and Jordan are less of a threat than needed and the final showdown lacks True Grit's sense of fun.Overall this is an OK western but far from Wayne at his best.
The film retreads True Grit for no real reason and Hepburn clearly isn't giving her all and seems to have a far away look in her eyes as she remembers The African Queen..
Stuart Millar ("When Legends Die") directs this great sequel to True Grit.The best thing in the film is the chemistry between Hepburn and Wayne - I had read somewhere that Hepburn was surprised how well she liked The Duke - She hadn't expected to get along with him.But the story is a great story, the crooks are great crooks!
And Wayne is Rooster Cogburn just like in True Grit!
Released in 1975, "Rooster Cogburn" stars John Wayne as hard-drinking, but formidable Marshal Rooster Cogburn, who reluctantly teams-up with a missionary, Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn), and a Native orphan, Wolf (Richard Romancito), to take down a band of ruthless outlaws who stole a wagon of nitro and guns in the Oregon wilderness.
Still Worth Watching Forty Years On. Rooster Cogburn" was John Wayne's penultimate film; his last was to be "The Shootist" from a year later.
I suspect that Eula (whose father is still alive at the beginning of the film) was originally supposed to be younger than Cogburn, but the role went to Katharine Hepburn, who was the same age as Wayne.
She is, however, excellent here, playing in one of her few Westerns a character similar to the one she had created in "The African Queen", one of her few war films, more than twenty years earlier.
There was to be no Oscar for Wayne this time, but he is at least as good as he had been in "True Grit".
The film could easily have ended up as the sort of dull, derivative Western adventure we had all seen too many times before, but Wayne, Hepburn and Millar combine to produce something which still remains worth watching forty years on.
It seems that the success of True Grit (the Oscar for John Wayne included) made people think about a sequel.
John Wayne as a rascally old rouge,Katherine Hepburn doing an encore of her role in the African Queen .Two super stars at the end of their careers.
I really can't blame the filmmakers for bringing Wayne back in his Oscar-winning role from TRUE GRIT but I do question why they also seemed to want to remake THE African QUEEN since Hepburn is playing the same type of role and the two films share some other connections.With all of that said, this here is the basic type of Western that you'd expect to see Wayne doing.
Those who watched African Queen will understand from where this movie came from,this sequel of True Grit,they tried explore the chemistry of those greatest actors Duke and Kate and they got it,no doubt about that,the movie is funny and every characters are engaged in their roles,especially John McIntire as judge and Strother Martin as McCoy the wise balsa man...they are superb...Rooster and Eula are on fight every time,both have a own way to think about the right and wrong and they are completely opposite each other....about the movie???
John Wayne returns to his iconic, Oscar winning character of one eyed, colorful deputy marshal "Rooster" Cogburn in this passable sequel (of sorts) to "True Grit".
Roosters' biggest problem: a spinster named Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn) insists on tagging along, because her minister father (Jon Lormer) was murdered by the Hawk gang and she wants to see that they're properly punished."Rooster Cogburn" is no "True Grit", not by a long shot, with a rather redundant story (by actress Martha Hyer, writing under a pseudonym).
In 1975, John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn had one big movie left apiece to make in their long careers.
"Rooster Cogburn" wasn't it, yet this manages to showcase both stars in an amiable-enough timekiller.Sometime after the events of "True Grit," our title protagonist (Wayne) loses his badge but gets a chance to get it back when a band of outlaws make off with a wagonload of nitro.
En route to sell the explosives, they happen upon a church community, killing the reverend and making an enemy of his crusty Yankee daughter Eula Goodnight (Hepburn).Never mind the serious-sounding set-up: "Rooster Cogburn" is more playful than earnest, last in a long line of cowboy romps starring Wayne.
"You will have need of it before we are through.""She sings a loud tune!" huffs Cogburn.Watching Hepburn and Wayne work together for the only time is plenty of fun.
"I wish this thing had a little more giddyup to it," Cogburn grunts, meaning a raft he and Eula are riding with their Indian companion, Wolf (Richard Romancito) but perhaps referencing the other vehicle they find themselves on.Still, you do get a lot of fun moments along the film's ever-winding way, with Wayne and Hepburn settling in comfortably to their respective corners.
Given how disparate their characters are, you expect more in the way of fireworks than you get, but Millar's emphasis on fun seems the right approach.Screen heavy Anthony Zerbe has a good turn as one of Hawk's riders, while Strother Martin shows up late in the film to pleasing effect.
Executive Producer Hal Wallis bought together John Wayne and one of the other great stars of the era Katharine Hepburn for this movie.
It is wonderful to see the great Hepburn riding a horse and sparring with John Wayne in this film.
Katharine Hepburn who in her long career worked with James Stewart, Cary Grant, Peter O'Toole, and her great love Spencer Tracy among others is equal to John Wayne in all matters in this film.
I've seen almost every picture John Wayne made after 1939 but waited until near the last to watch this one because I just couldn't believe it would live up to True Grit and it doesn't.
My main problem with this movie is that I would have preferred it not to be a sequel to True Grit -- that story and the Rooster Cogburn character is somewhat sacred to me and if they weren't going to be true to them, why not just make it a generic John Wayne vehicle of the time?
This time around there's actually quite a bit of chemistry between him and Katherine Hepburn, much more so than Wayne and Kim Darby in the first film.
After catching "True Grit" on TCM one night, while in the mood of a great Wayne Western, I was more then delighted at the wonderfully colorful character of "Rooster Cogburn" his drunk cat and his litigious and all too pushy boss "Mattie Ross".
Katharine Hepburn is magic as always, and though I don't know much about John Wayne, I thought he did a good job here.
Recalling the final scene of "True Grit" when John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn and horse jumped the fence without assistance from special effects or stuntmen, a reprise of the Oscar - winning role was keenly anticipated.
First off, let me say that it was a pleasure to see John Wayne & Katharine Hepburn in the same movie for the only time in their careers.
Although, they were too old to play these parts, that doesn't change the fact that any movie they were in was infinitely better simply due to their presence.However, I felt that the plot was generally inferior to True Grit, which the character of Rooster Cogburn in based from.
And third, the plot was very haphazard, making little to no sense in several parts.With all that being said, this is still a very good movie and one any fan of Wayne or Hepburn should definitely see.
"True Grit" was a great western...though not as great as films like Wayne's "Rio Bravo".
But, I guess that's where the suspension of disbelief comes in.The attraction here is not the story, but the two lead characters: John Wayne adn Katharine Hepburn.
If you have seen the engaging True Grit, then you will probably like this not great, but good sequel.
In this village is Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn, playing a character similar to that in The African Queen), who had her father Rev. Goodnight (Jon Lormer) killed by the villains, and she and Wolf (Richard Romancito) are the only survivors.
Rooster Cogburn has John Wayne reprising his role as U.S. Marshal Reuben J.
So says John Wayne, repeating his "True Grit" role as "Rooster Cogburn".
This is a reminder of how much fun movies USED to be.The basic storyline, an official sequel to "True Grit", is a re-tread of "The African Queen" with Wayne back as Rooster, taking over what Humphrey Bogart did in John Huston's 1951 masterpiece.
Between Humphrey Bogart (African Queen) and John Wayne's previous films (Hatari!l, et al), this story has been done and done.