Rating: 8/10

Bamn! It takes a few minutes for Gran Torino to get going, but once it does, fasten your seat belt. Clint Eastwood is at the helm and stars as a jaded old man. Once you see him squint his eyes and mutter a few threats, comparisons to Dirty Harry are inevitable. Instead of San Francisco, we find ourselves in Detroit, Michigan, in a deteriorating neighborhood, where Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) is a tiny island of whiteness in a neighborhood taken over by Hmong immigrants. Walt is outwardly very racist and the machine gun fire pace of racial epithets spewed in this film would likely make Tarantino blush. It’s so over the top, it lends one to believe that these are superficial, as opposed to ingrained beliefs.

We’re introduced to Walt as a recently widowed, retired auto worker of Polish descent. Not to knock Clint Eastwood, but he has such a huge screen presence, that no one’s really buying that. Clint plays Clint, and that’s really ok. He’s pretty much the only recognizable face here, and to his credit, he decided to work with a bunch of newcomers of Hmong descent. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this movie, (and it is damn entertaining), is the interaction between Clint’s character and these kids.

Things get going, when a kid tries to steal Walt’s prized Gran Torino out of his garage. He can’t identify the kid, but he seems ready to go postal on the whole neighborhood to get to the bottom of things. The next night, a fight breaks out on his neighbor’s lawn. It spreads to his lawn where, among other things, a few garden gnomes are destroyed. For heaven’s sake, do not mess with man’s garden gnomes. This you do not do. Out comes the rifle he used in the Korean war and out comes an angry old man with whom you do not want to mess. He succeeds in getting them off his lawn and, as it turns out, has also thwarted a local gang from recruiting the shy teenager living next door. Walt becomes a hero among his Hmong neighbors though he’ll have nothing of it. The shower him with gifts and won’t leave him alone. This gets on his nerves to no end. Once he lets his guard a tiny bit down, however, they literally invade his heart. Watching him warm up is a joy.

That’s not to say this is a feel good movie. Gran Torino combines aspects of the deterioration of the American family, turf warfare, assimilation difficulties, and, perhaps the most disturbing, the power of a gun. Clint certainly does come across as a menacing, tough old man, but until he whips out his piece, his threat is not fully accepted. NRA members are sure to love this, but this is very troubling indeed. I didn’t mention racism as one of the troubling aspects of this film, because I really do feel that this is a case of actions speaking louder than words. And the “Oh sh*t!” knee-jerk reaction to much of the language is part of what makes the movie so entertaining. The film literally floats on a sea of racial epithets. The amazing part is that we are able to look past this language and gaze in awe at the film’s glowing, warm heart.

Nice work, Clint. You are the man.

Filed under: 2008 by A.B.