An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
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London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Clint Eastwood.
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, John Carroll Lynch
Description: Haunted by his experiences in the Korean War and consumed by grief over the death of his beloved wife, Walt Kowalski has become bitter and jaded towards everyone around him, including his two uncaring sons, Mitch and Steve. The old coot has no time for his Asian next-door neighbours, whom he labels "swamp rats". When Hmong gangbanger Spider and his four-strong posse scrap with neighbour's son Thao on his front lawn, Walt intervenes with a threat to use his M-1 rifle. Spider and co flee vowing revenge to the delight of Thao's older sister, Sue, who goes out of her way to strengthen ties between the two households.
Country: US/AUSTRALIA. 2008. 116mins
Grumpy old man: Eastwood as Walt Kowalski, a widowed and embittered Korean War veteran
Clint Eastwood has had an extraordinary career and if this performance proves to be the 78-year-old’s last, as he has threatened, it will be a fitting finale. In his 29th time in the chair, he is also the director of what is a patently schematic film, pretending to be tough and hard-nosed but, in fact, deeply sentimental. In anyone else’s hands, the story of Walt Kowalski, retired car worker and embittered Korean War vet, might have been an irritatingly compromised movie but somehow this extraordinary icon of the cinema swings it.
Gran Torino turns out to be a summing-up of the emotional changes that Eastwood has made in himself and his films over the past half a century or so, as well as an effective parable about one man’s redemption and the decency that lies within most of us if only we could grab hold of it.
Kowalski, a lapsed Catholic, has just buried his wife, grimly noticing that his granddaughter has come to the funeral with a bare midriff. He is also incensed by the young priest (Christopher Carley) who gives the eulogy and then tries to get him to go to confession.
Nothing much pleases him except Daisy, his loving labrador who follows him everywhere and asks nothing of him. In particular, he doesn’t like the way most of his neighbours have left and been replaced by Hmong immigrants from South-East Asia, while aimless gangs of Latinos, African Americans and Hmong youngsters roam the area. Nor does he care much for his grown-up family, who are trying to get him into a plush home for the elderly.
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To say that Walt is a racist is putting it mildly, though his joshing with the local barber is political incorrectness with a smile underneath the mutual racial insults. But when he catches the teenage boy next door (Bee Vang) trying to steal his treasured old Gran Torino from his garage, the smile vanishes and he brings out his cleaned and ready M-1 rifle. Only a trip prevents him firing it.
The boy, pressured by a local gang to do the deed, then gets attacked by the gang for failing and his sister, Sue (Ahney Her), is tormented as she walks to the shops. On both occasions, Kowalski comes to the rescue like an aged Dirty Harry suddenly seeing punks everywhere and almost saying: “Make my day!”
His action results in presents of food and flowers being deposited at his door by Sue’s grateful family, which at first annoys him and then softens him up sufficiently to join Sue for a party at her home. Wonder of wonders, he likes both the girl and the food, beginning to realise that his life is pretty empty and ‘‘gooks’’ and ‘‘ginks’’ may be worth something after all.
He even begins to respect the young priest, despite being called Walt by him rather than Mr Kowalski.
All this is a bit on the wishful-thinking side. But Eastwood, spitting out his tobacco and his myriad racial slurs through his thin lips, somehow makes us accept him for what he is: a man born in a different time who can’t accept what’s happening around him, and remembers what he had to do in the way of killing during the Korean War.
He offers us a character with a heart mostly of stone but also a reluctantly revealed gold centre. The film progresses into something like catharsis and the melodrama of the final reels places it securely within Eastwood’s oeuvre as both actor and director.
Will you believe this extraordinary fable? I’m not sure. But I’m certain you will admire the way Eastwood handles it, in front of and behind the camera. Gran Torino is made without fuss and acted out with the kind of natural grace only a real titan of the cinema could manage. And Clint is a titan — one of the best directors in America and a performer whose range has extended mightily throughout his career.
That’s what is so moving about this film, though one also has to say Sue’s family, and everyone else, seem to have learned from their director that characters should be carefully observed and then given shape and substance without any sense of striving for effect. That’s the Eastwood way, and it works a treat.
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A superb film, I'm amazed that this got nominated for nothing at the Oscars, best film and best supporting actors would have been my choice but perhaps America only likes it when he churns out safe dross like Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood himself superbly portrays a miserable, racist, canterous old git who is just coming to terms with his wife having died and the realisation that he has no friends and wants none either. His neighbourhood is being overrun by Chinese and as a bigoted old Korean veteran he has no tolerance for his new neighbours, until one tries to steal his car and then slowly a mutual respect evolves. Brilliantly played, the final half hour is like rubbernecking a car crash, you know what's going to happen but you just can't look away. I highly recommend it.
- Bob, Cheam
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