Gran Torino (2008)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This movie is about a man who commutes a sin before and a kid whose life has just begun. Walt decides to protect the kid even if it costs his life. I like the description of the time course of the friendship between Walt and Thao.

There may not be any native Californian Indians chasing Clint in this film but if this story line were played to the backdrop western theme score "Tombstone" you would swear you were watching Clint playing the character Joe from his 1964 western For A Few Dollars More. Clint plays a grouchy old Polish descent Korean war vet named Walt Kowalski, who with each passing decade has seen his neighborhood gentrified which is difficult for an old war vet like Walt to adjust to being surrounded by the people he shot at decades ago when he was shipped overseas.When one of his next door neighbours teenage kid attempts to steal his priceless Gran Torino you think there would be hell to pay? Instead Walt Kowalski sees in this young man named Thao (played by Bee Vang) a lost soul who needs his help to stay on the right path and to stay as far away from the neighborhood criminal elements.We learn through time that as the old western saying goes...."Walt's bark is a lot worse than his bite." Walt Kowalsky is a widower who is a foul mouthed (appears to be) racist old Korean war vet who happens to be estranged from his adult sons and his grandchildren so Walt develops an inner fondness for his foreign born neighbors and we see his heart shine through when trouble comes a calling in Walt Kowalsky's neighbourhood. Clint Eastwood directed himself in Gran Torino and he is more than prepared to share the limelight with his co-stars which is an admirable quality in the (then) 78 year old actor/director who is still going strong today ten (10) years later.We love you Clint, so don't go riding/driving out in to the sunset just yet. I believe you have a few more songs to sing before the sun goes down for the last time even at your current age of 88.I give Gran Torino an 8 out of 10 rating.

When I saw this I loved it. I feel there is some Walt in all of us somewhere. Whoever hasn't seen Gran Torino should. You will learn a lot of life lessons. It is one of the best.

In summary, the film is about a racist war veteran (Walt) who is somehow also the moral compass of the film, despite being a racist. We are ostensibly to accept that this is okay and that he's great because he is old, a war vet, and played by Clint Eastwood. Okay. The film also attempts (clumsily) to make Eastwood's horrible character more sympathetic by making the primary Vietnamese character a thief. I don't find any of this to be particularly great--or realistic--storytelling as others have said. I will say that I like the destination/message of the film--which I do think was well-intentioned--but I hated the path it took to get there. A more realistic story about these themes would have been, "the world becomes a better place because racist Walt died in Korea."