Synopsis

Walter Kowalski is elderly, bitter, widowed and alone. His new neighbors, immigrants from Southeast Asia, seem like the last people he's likely to befriend. But a series of sudden, violent events leads to Walt reluctantly taking the neighbor's teenage son under his wing. As the old man and the young man get to know each other, a genuine friendship develops. Meanwhile, members of a local ethnic street gang have nefarious plans for the both of them.

Pros:

• A great performance from Eastwood.


• A tight story that never drags.


• This is a movie that's genuinely concerned with the important things in life ... things like family, courage and friendship.


• The movie addresses racism in a surprisingly honest way.

Cons:

• A couple of fairly weak performances in major roles.

Generally:

Three and a half or maybe four on a five scale. Eastwood's own resume gives this movie a lot to live up to, but on general terms it's a fine film.

Extended Review:

Clint Eastwood has implied that Gran Torino will be his final effort as an actor. If so, there are certainly worse ways that he could have ended his on-screen career. Gran Torino is a compact and efficient little story that hinges on a classic Eastwood performance and a lean script from screenwriter Nick Schenk. It won't be remembered as Eastwood's best movie, neither as an actor nor as a director, but this is a film he can be proud of.

Clint Eastwood will turn 79 this May. His character in Gran Torino (Walt Kowalski) turns 80 during the course of the movie, and for the first time on screen, Eastwood really looks his age. Walt wears his pants up around his mid-torso, lights cigarettes with a Zippo, and spends a lot of time reading on his front porch. Walt Kowalski is a grouchy old fart, and Eastwood plays it real, warts and all.

The best thing about the character is that he's not just a harmless movie-version of a grouchy old fart. For most of the movie's two hours, Walt is a very unpleasant man. So much so, in fact, that this character might alienate himself from the audience as thoroughly as he seems to have alienated himself from his family and neighbors. Walt is a racist and a sexist who constantly uses racial slurs, mocks the religious faith of his loved ones, and is generally cruel to everyone except his dog.

In fact, Kowalski's constant racist epithets might really offend the most sensitive moviegoers. Personally, I thought that the characters racism was one of the many things that made Eastwood's performance so genuine. Look, it's this simple: many (maybe most) of the old men I know are racist to one degree or another. Old white men, old black men, old men of every color and creed are pretty often cantankerous in every way possible. To have made Walter Kowalski politically correct would have been disingenuous. The old bastard just doesn't care what he says or in who's presence he says it. I know old men like that and I totally believed this character.

Best of all, this is a movie that proposes that there are things that are actually worse than racism. Imagine that! We live in a society that embraces nutty concepts like "hate crimes," the idea that some murders might be worse than others, depending on the motives involved. (Aren't all murders crimes of hate?) Gran Torino is, in at least one way, a very bold movie. It suggests that, with some people, racism might be a hundred miles wide ... but only an inch deep. No wonder the same Motion Picture Academy that piled Oscars on Crash a few years ago didn't quite know what to think of this film. Walter Kowalski is an unabashed racist, but he's not beyond redemption. That's not exactly the clean, neat, acceptable way to present a racist character, even if it is honest.


As a matter of fact, the politically incorrect dialogue in the movie is used to tremendous effect in one scene in particular: This movie is essentially the story of Walter begrudgingly becoming friends with a young Asian man in his neighborhood. Early in the film, before he develops affection for the young man, Walter constantly peppers him with racial slurs out of genuine disrespect. But as he develops regard for the young man he wants to make it clear to him that he likes him. Lacking the ability to simply say "Hey, I like ya, kid," Walt instead takes him to his local barber shop so that he can hear the way that he and the Italian barber trade ethnic jabs as a way of horsing around. Walt even attempts to instruct his young Asian friend on the proper way to "talk like a fella." The scene works for two reasons... one, it makes it clear that at this point in the story Walt's slurs toward his young Asian friend are the old man's dysfunctional way of expressing affection. It's really all he knows. And, two, that scene ends with the young man delivering the funniest punchline I've heard in any movie in a long time.

Like my all time favorite film, Eastwood's masterful Unforgiven, Gran Torino revisits the themes that have defined the actor/director's best work. Forgiveness and redemption and sacrifice are the keynotes, here. This movie's dramatic apex is sort of an alternate version of the climactic scene in Unforgiven, with selflessness substituted for revenge to tremendous effect. It isn't necessarily a realistic way for the story to end, but viewed through the prism of Eastwood's career, it's meaningful and quite moving.

Gran Torino doesn't quite reach Unforgiven's artistic heights, but it certainly doesn't fail, either. Eastwood fans will find a lot to enjoy in Gran Torino, as will fans of good movies in general.

The trailer for Gran Torino

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies