Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Premise: Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint
Eastwood) is faced with overcoming his prejudice as a Hmong family moves in next
door. Walt takes the neighbor boy (Bee Vang) under his wing, toughening him up
and acting like a father figure.
What Works: Gran Torino is a film about new
beginnings and the film plays with stereotypes. Although Eastwood has typically
played rough or difficult characters, Walt Kowalski is one of the thorniest
characters in his entire filmography. Like Jack Nicholson’s performance in As
Good As It Gets, the film manages to use Eastwood’s charm to allow the
audience to laugh while watching the character say really horrible, racist
things. As audience members we can laugh about the audaciousness of what he says
while not condoning what he says, and the film walks that line. His transition
is not overdone and he retains some of the racist vocabulary while also
demonstrating a change in behavior. This lends the character and the story
credibility. Gran Torino is extremely well unified it its theme of family
relations and community. Walt Kowalski’s yuppie sons and grandchildren play
like the redneck, white trash family of Million
Dollar Baby and it risks derailing the film with overly broad strokes.
But this film makes much better use of the characters than Million Dollar
Baby by using them to show how emotionally estranged Walt has become from
his children and how he has more in common with his Hmong neighbors than his own
family. Of the Hmong family, there is a pair of terrific performances by Bee
Vang as Tao, the teenage boy who Walt takes under his wing, and Ahney Her as
Sue, Tao’s older sister. Both act very naturally and Bee Vang is especially
good at selling the boy’s transition and his bond with Walt.
What Doesn’t: The film uses a very heavy handed
Christ metaphor at the end that does not seem to match with Walt’s regard for
religion or his general attitudes about violence. The picture builds toward a Taxi
Driver or Death
Sentence-style ending, but instead it pulls away and sets off in a
different direction. Some may view this as a cop out, especially those expecting
a revisitation of Eastwood’s Dirty
Harry films, which Gran Torino isn’t.
Bottom Line: Clint Eastwood continues his extraordinary string of directorial efforts with Gran Torino, which is among the better films he has made.