Gran Torino

First a story entitled "The Time I met Clint Eastwood." It is about, well, the time I met Clint Eastwood.

For a few years, my father, my brothers and I would go to Pebble Beach for the ProAm golf tournament. We set up shop at one hole and watch everyone come through. We were usually the first ones at the hole and as people came, we would get trapped into our spot. This was not usually a problem, but when a pro golfer hit a shot that was off and coming right towards us and there was nothing we could do. I turned away from the ball so it would not hit me, but it hit me right on my ass. It stung badly, and while the golfer was trying to figure out how to hit his ball (it ended up under a chair and blanket), I heard a voice saying "The ball hit you on the ass, huh?" I turned to the voice and had to look up to see the face and there he was, Dirty Harry in the flesh. I nodded my head and he said "Well you took like a champ" he touched my shoulder, started laughing and walked off." As he walked off, I regained my ability to move and think and I thought about it and realized, Dirty Harry had just touched me, had just made a joke at my expense and I was still scared of him! The man is walking danger. If ever there was a man at over 70 years old who could make a movie about an old man killing some young gang bangers it is him.

Watch the trailer before going further:


I start with the trailer because my review is going to discuss the trailer, possibly at length. It will not become common practice for me to use the trailer as my synopsis, though, so do not worry.

What the trailer shows is a movie that looks an awful like a generic revenge film, like Death Wish, Falling Down, Death Sentence or The Brave One. You see a lot of violence and guns and Clint being a bad ass. This gave me the impression that the movie was going to be a run of the mill movie with a Vietnam war vet who hates everyone else, drinks beer and shoots people. If I was not into watching all possible Oscar contenders, I never would have seen Gran Torino because of what the trailer showed me the movie was. The trailer is wrong. I cannot believe how badly marketed this film is. I mean, I understand it because it is marketed for maximum appeal, but it is not the trailer. In fact, with one exception all of the guns in the trailer make up all of the guns in the entire movie. The movie is not at all a revenge film. It is not at all generic. I was wrong when I told Robbie how basic and run of the mill it looked. But, can you blame me?

Walt Kowalski(Eastwood) is a Vietnam vet. He is a racist, he does drink beer, a lot and he hates religion, but that is only the beginning of the movie. Walt is a dying breed and he sparks a friendship with a Hmong family. A family that puts up with his horribly racist comments and a family that loves feeding him delicious food. Gran Torino is a movie that is exploring Xenophobia or what it means to be American. It is exploring what it means to be a real man and it shows political incorrectness in a world increasingly more politically correct every day. It is a sometimes funny, often times uncomfortable film with a tender center and Eastwood has done a wonderful job as a director and a good job as an actor. Yes, Walt does kick a bit of ass and he is a scary man who is not afraid of threatening people, but that is only the surface of the movie. If the trailer had focused on his budding friendship with the two Hmong children, I would have been singing a different tune. If I knew at its core, Gran Torino was discussing cultural events in a real way, or had been a movie about what being a man means, I would have been interested.

Now, as it has been discussed at great length at my job, I am not ever the target audience for the mainstream, regular guy movie goer. I saw this movie even though the trailer turned me off. I am just that guy. So, trailers are not meant to appeal to me. I am an oddity in terms of movies. However, I can be won over by trailers. I can be suckered by them (Hello, My Bloody Valentine) and I want trailers to reflect what the movies will actually be about and Gran Torino's trailer fails on a massive level. Now, the movie does not always succeed, either. I respect Clint for wanting to cast actual Hmong people, but in order to do that, he had to cast a whole bunch of non-actors and it shows. There are moments when the acting from the kids is so bad it distracted me to no end, especially around the climax. The screenplay is a bit too repetitive at times and The stuff with the young priest gets a annoying at times, although the conclusion of the Walt/Priest dynamic is nice. However, considering what I expected, I was pleasantly surprised by Gran Torino and I can respect what it was trying to do.

Final Grade: B+