Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Gran Torino (2008, R)


Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Grade: B+

“Get off my lawn,” growls Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a Korean War veteran and Gran Torino’s unlikely hero who aims his M1 Garand straight in the faces of the gang members fighting it out in front of his house.  At first, Walt doesn’t want anything to do with these people, Hmong immigrants who have recently taken over the neighborhood, leading to intense gang violence.  What’s more, his wife of fifty years has just passed away, the rest of his family is eager to claim his prized 1972 Ford Gran Torino, he’s sick and coughing up blood frequently, and he’s had enough of the gang warfare in his neighborhood.  Walt shows absolutely no respect for these people, instead staying off to himself on his front porch, drinking multiple cans of beer every day with his aging Labrador Retriever, Daisy, by his side.  He swears and sneers at any one who walks by, and dismisses the efforts of a young Catholic priest to get him to confess. 

 What’s ironic, even about these particular circumstances, is that Walt is actually a likeable protagonist, but only after we get to know him after a while.  The reasons owed to this are that we come to know his character so well (undoubtedly due to the Eastwood persona which, over the years, we have to come to readily identity with), and because he redeems himself by the second half of the film when he makes the decision to defend a Hmong family from a group of aggressive gangsters.

 Gran Torino is a wholly gripping and brutal drama, but more importantly, it’s a fitting eulogy to the acting/director career of Eastwood.  Even though the ending feels rushed and hasty, Eastwood has acted in and directed in one of his finest films in years.  Eastwood is undoubtedly one of the most successful and iconic film actors and directors of our time; nearly everything he put into Gran Torino was successful.  Yes, Gran Torino is harsh, serious, and vulgar, and it’s for those reasons that it may drastically lose appeal to audiences.  But the story here is something fresh, the characters are easy to identify with, and it’s nice to see a 78-year old Eastwood as rough and tough as ever.  Gran Torino isn’t at a level of flawlessness, but Eastwood has succeeded in pulling off another fine film under his belt.  B+

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