Half-Ass Movie Review: Gran Torino
His onscreen performances have been getting less and less frequent. Eastwood hasn’t acted since 2004’s Million Dollar Baby. That’s a shame, since he’s really an interesting performer. He looked haunted back when he was a young man. At 78, he now comes off as a man who not only has the weight of the world on his shoulders, but is bearing up just fine, thank you. His Gran Torino character, a recently widowed Korean War veteran, really feels like he’s lived through Eastwood’s past roles (except maybe Space Cowboys) – Walt Kowalski just has an instant history as soon as we meet him.
We meet Walt at his wife’s funeral, and immediately find out that his wife was the only thing anybody liked about him. He has a terrible relationship with his sons, doesn’t even like his grandchildren, and everything in the world just serves to piss him off further. Left to his own devices, Walt’s perfectly happy to spend the day sitting on the porch, downing Coors and staring at his mint condition 1972 Gran Torino.
The authenticity doesn’t end with Kowalski. Set and shot in Detroit, Torino perfectly evokes one of those neighborhoods in the D. The houses are all a little too close together, the nearest businesses all seem like they came out of a decade long past, the neighborhood’s been racially mixed for years but nobody is happy about it. Other than the bit where somebody is actually interested in Lions season tickets, it’s the real Detroit.
The plot mostly concerns itself with the Hmong family that lives next door to Walt. Oldest son Thao is on the verge of getting tied up with his cousin’s gang until his initiation, stealing that Gran Torino, goes wrong. Clint is pushing 80 but you still are not going to get away with stealing his 
stuff. After driving off the gang (leading to the scene from all the commercials that looks hilarious but is actually fantastic where Clint aims an M-1 rifle at the thugs and tells them to get the hell off his lawn), Walt becomes a hero to the Hmong community, and an unwilling mentor to Thao.
stuff. After driving off the gang (leading to the scene from all the commercials that looks hilarious but is actually fantastic where Clint aims an M-1 rifle at the thugs and tells them to get the hell off his lawn), Walt becomes a hero to the Hmong community, and an unwilling mentor to Thao.There’s so much about the movie could have gone wrong. A simple plot summary sounds sappy. Old man learns a lesson about life from young people – I’ve seen that movie, and that movie sucked. There’s so much more to Gran Torino, though. Besides a script (by Nick Schenk) that sidesteps all the potential landmines of treacle, Eastwood’s performance lifts it to another level. Part of that is his own formidable skill. Nobody plays grizzled like Eastwood, and nobody else could sell the idea that this 78-year-old can and will beat your ass and come out on top.
There’s something else that Eastwood brings to this performance, something that nobody else could do. He brings his history. Kowalski is a flinty old man. He has a tortured, violent past. He clings to stereotypes and ethnic slurs, even when he makes an authentic attempt to understand and respect Hmong culture. (It’s the way that so many senior citizens are nervous about things that are different and can’t really keep track of what is and isn’t an offensive term, but they like people just fine once they get to know them.) Basically, Walt Kowalski is any number of Clint Eastwood’s characters from the 1970’s and 80’s in their twilight years.
In much the same way that Unforgiven is a deconstruction of Eastwood’s Western characters, Gran Torino analyzes his vigilante characters from years ago. He’s a real-world Harry Callahan. He’s an older and sadder version of Sgt. Thomas Highway from Heartbreak Ridge. But where Dirty Harry was gleefully violent and deliberately provocative in the title character’s clashes with minority criminals, Gran Torino features a man who knows his own dark side and does his best to put it behind him. And despite the way Walt peppers his speech with old-timey ethnic slurs, what really has him upset is the homogenization of thug culture. In Gran Torino we see Asian, White, Black, and Hispanic gangs – and they all behave similarly. They use the same slang, wear the same clothes, even speak with the same cadence. Walt’s not really a racist – he hates all lowlifes equally. Thirty years ago, audiences cheered when Dirty Harry blew away drug dealers. Today, we’re cheering for a man who’s standing up against a culture that consumes the young. No matter what decade you’re in, Clint Eastwood hates punks.
But it’s not all about Eastwood confronting his past roles. At its core, Gran Torino is a strong story with a big heart. It even takes time to be funny, and when Clint Eastwood is funny, he’s really funny. And when he drops a line like “I’ll blow a hole in your face and sleep like a baby”, he sells it like nobody else.
Most of the major roles are filled by Hmong performers, only one of whom had acted in a movie before. Bee Vang (Thao) is particularly impressive, serving as the focus of a big hunk of the movie. As his sister, Ahney Her will break your heart, unless you’re dead inside. Christopher Carley’s Father Janovich is worth noting too. The priest was a confidant of Walt’s wife during her last years, and though Walt wants nothing to do with him, the young Father stands by Walt and offers as much counsel as he can. (Changeling also featured a feisty yet pious man of God. Faith plays more and more of a role in Eastwood’s films from the last five years or so, and I’m interested to see where he’s going with this theme.)
Gran Torino is sad and funny. It expresses big themes about mortality and the country that America is now, and it still manages to have characters who are real and individual, rather than symbols. And at the end, when it plays out like the polar opposite of Unforgiven, it will affect you in a way you’re not fully prepared for. Or, as my sister put it, “If you don’t love Gran Torino, you are stupid and probably ugly.”
