New Pics: Jeff Bridges In True Grit; Rutger Hauer In Hobo With A Shotgun

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It's a good day to be a fan of aging men with a violent streak. Over the last week we've had behind the scenes video glimpses of both the Coen Brothers version of True Grit and Jason Eisener's feature-length expansion of his fake grindhouse trailer Hobo With a Shotgun. Now we've got still images of Jeff Bridges and Rutger Hauer in their respective costumes for each film.

On Location Vacations has the first images we've seen of Bridges in costume as Rooster Cogburn, the hard-drinking, trigger-happy man hired by a young girl to avenge her murdered father. John Wayne played the original screen version of the character, which became one of his signature roles. (Winning an Oscar for it helped. If you've never seen it, watch Wayne's speech, which is one of the great, moving acceptance speeches.) But his most well-remembered look for the character was quite a bit different than this.

We don't see Cogburn with the eye patch here, but the tipster who sent in the images and video (below) notes that Bridges had evidently just arrived on set. So there may be an eye patch, though in the novel I believe the one-eyed Cogburn did not wear one.

Seeing the reserved costume wrapped around Bridges further underscores the fact that this is likely to be a very different film from the John Wayne one. Joel and Ethan Coen have said they're staying much closer to the original novel, and then there's the whole idea of scoring some of the film with Protestant hymns. As was the cast when we saw the costuming for young heroine Mattie Ross, this peek makes that idea seem quite right. And I don't see this version of Cogburn blasting away on horseback like a charging knight. But you never know.

And then there's the dirtier side of vengeance: Rutger Hauer as the title character in Hobo With a Shotgun. Twitch has this image, and it looks pretty great, and a bit more telling than the brief glimpse seen on video before. Hauer says of the film, "We're being very naughty and very dirty and very ugly. We're not trying to make anything pretty. We're not trying to charm anybody. We're saying this is an ugly movie." Fan-tastic. What I want to know is: was this photo of Mr. Hauer snapped as the hobo is on his way back from the dead hooker store?

Here's the official synopsis:

Hobo With A Shotgun tells the story of a vigilante homeless man who pulls into a new city and finds himself trapped in urban chaos, a city where crime rules and where the city's crime boss reigns. Seeing an urban landscape filled with armed robbers, corrupt cops, abused prostitutes and even a pedophile Santa, the Hobo goes about bringing justice to the city the best way he knows how – with a 20-gauge shotgun. Mayhem ensues when he tries to make things better for the future generation. Street justice will indeed prevail.