"Gran Torino" (2008) - Movie Review

Myself and my brother were dancing coming back from the school in the city bus heading our home. It was a Saturday afternoon and in our school they sometimes had half day on occasions. The jubilation is to watch a film that called itself “Dirty Harry” with a very mean and rough East Wood on the covers if I am not wrong. See in those days we do not watch a film if in the introducing titles there were not any “Stunt Co-ordinators”. And with the video guy boasting so much of the action in the film to our dad, we were singing literally of the name “Dirty Harry”. Little did we know that the action in Eastwood’s were something we could not embrace as kids. But I remember “Do I feel lucky?” which stitches in the heart without even aware of its appreciation you had. Someday I will watch it but you get to see “Gran Torino” for Eastwood in these days and seriously I can only describe it with some cursing attached to it and truly representing it, that he is one mean bad ass who will literally kick ass and take names.

Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is “the” American. Trimmed hair, polished shoes and that groan emitting at the site of the American tradition bullied, butchered and tainted which he sees in terms of the immigration in the current trend. He wonders what the kid in a priest suit Father Janovich (Christopher Carley) knows about life and death. He wants to get up and slap his grand kids who are caught up in the world of texting and trendy dressing and more importantly forgetting the respect for their elders. These are all happening at the Church for the funeral of his demised wife. He pretty much has lost the shield from his wife who would have buffered every one to him and vice versa. Man she would have had to put a lot with him but he is a sweet smooth guy when it comes to women which he advises later to the neighbour kid Thao (Bee Vang) and they obviously do not get started on a right note.

Walt is in this neighbourhood with Hmong predominant residence. He is a racist and bleeds when seeing his America been occupied as comes with every old traditional hard proud people of any nation. Being a Korean war veteran, he has two things which would be his panache of work and appreciate his skill at the art. One being his 1972 Gran Torino which he got himself once he got out of Ford manufacturing plant. Second would be his instinctive reach for gun and slurs. That makes him a tough man to reach. Valor is the language he would speak. Man is a religion and he thinks every single kid earns it when they grow up. Of course he lives in 50s as one of his sons say. They are the typical sons who never really got along with Walt not surprisingly but also produce offsprings who see them not respecting their father and hence comes easily for them to follow it towards their grandfather.

I have seen Eastwood as a director than as an actor. He gets this stories and builds them with a non-stylized original scenes. And when the picture culminates we would have been involved with him along with his building of this film. We would be in the sides of his film’s people and in a half awake dream would appreciate it in both sense of reality and imagination. That has been the only characteristic I could able to underline of his films. He makes good movies and often migrates into greatness as time goes by. In “Gran Torino” he depicts Walt Kowalski with dialogues which can only be said by him with his thorn filled voice and a face frightening the hell out of you.

Walt lives by racial epithets and he takes immense joy out of it. He belongs in a country and wears it in his shoulders. He has friends who knows his frequency of what he is. They fight over with racial remarks as a symbol of their closeness as his barber Martin (John Caroll Lynch) does. But more importantly is a person of rightness when the situation comes. That is how he gets involved when his neighbour girl Sue (Ahney Her) gets in trouble.

You work with people with racism in their heads. In fact it would shared amongst day in and day out and argue about it on its wrongness and prejudice of it while the others for it. They are the people when they meet other races and gets to know would become great friends too still sharing the same views only that they have an exception. The problem is they never give that chance to their perspective to see everything with openness than to leave for options to shrink. Walt is one such who does not lose his perspective but becomes a good friend with his neighbours who are not Americans. He still groans with resentment and irritation when his new doctor is an Asian. He never changes but it is about his peace in life. He is in constant denial of not having to confront his haunting war nightmares despite his wife’s last wish for him to confess.

“Gran Torino” is fun to watch of Eastwood giving punches on the screen with his point blank eye to eye straight arrowed dialogues and sometimes with bare knuckles. Never does his Walt flinch on how his people skills are hurting other. He stands by it and lives by it. Clint Eastwood is solid. And when some one says that there is an image of that in a character. Everything needs to be felt to see the real thing but you would know what I exactly mean when I say solid. “Gran Torino” is another film from this man who never takes rest.