Gran Torino

Gran Torino

By Jonathan Fisher, January 22nd, 2009


If I were to describe to you the plot of Gran Torino, it would sound like a cliche from beginning to end. On reflection, there's nothing really remarkable or original about the way that director/star Clint Eastwood presents this story of a misanthropic, racist old man opening his heart and allowing his better judgment to shine through. It might not be a subtle film, but I bought it because of Eastwood's performance, and the sparse and uncomplicated directorial style that has served his film-making career well in the last fifteen years. Million Dollar Baby it ain't, but Gran Torino provides us with at least a glimpse of how Eastwood can produce emotional satisfaction from potentially trite material.

Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran who lives alone with his dog after the recent death of his wife. The local pastor (played well by Christopher Carley) informs him that his wife asked him to look over Walt on her death bed. Walt informs him that he only went to church because his wife wanted him to, and that he perceives the pastor as a young, wet-behind-the-ears upstart who pretends to know all the answers about life and death when he knows nothing. One of the enjoyable things about Walt's character is watching him unapologetically call it as he sees it.

An Asian family moves in next door to Walt, something he is not happy about. He swears at them, treats them with disgust, but becomes involved when a family cousin, who is a member of a local Asian gang, provokes a situation. Walt inadvertently saves the day when the brawl spills over onto his property. He cocks his rifle (I'm quite sure Walt would be a member of the NRA) and snarls "get off my lawn", a line that might become nearly as popular as "make my day" in Clint Eastwood's canon.

The Hmong family shower Walt with gifts that he doesn't want. He tells them that he just wants to be left alone. The youngest child of the family, Thao (Bee Vang), is coerced into joining the Asian gang, and as part of his initiation rites, he must steal Walt's beautifully maintained 1972 Gran Torino. Walt catches Thao in the act, and Thao's family forces him to work for Walt for a week to repay his debt. What happens next is hardly a surprise -- Walt comes to know the family as real people and slowly relinquishes his former racism. He finds that he really has more in common with these Asians than his own family. What makes all of this work is Clint Eastwood as Walt. I don't know what it is about him as an actor -- with Walt, he almost parodies his former tough-guy image but also somehow seems just too complex to pass off as a caricature.

Walt throws about a wide range of racial slurs regularly, and I had a peculiar reaction to them all -- I laughed. Not at the expense of the Asians, I assure you, but because of their indifference to his remarks. They took them as just words, and nothing more, and all of a sudden Walt's continued attempts at posturing and trying to make them feel inferior seemed comical. The Hmong family's daughter brushes the insults off and says to Walt, "When you say those things, I know you're not being hostile. You're just Walt being Walt." The appearance of the neighborhood suggests that it probably was a typical, predominantly white working class area for much of Walt's adult life. In the new century, ethnic diversity has encroached upon it. Walt may have had other neighbours who shared his narrow-eyed views, but all of a sudden he has become a man who is out of place in his own neighborhood.

The movie lumbers along to an inevitable confrontation between Walt and the Asian gang that threatens his neighbours. I thought that I'd just about exhausted my tolerance for material at this point, but I was surprised at how moving I found the climactic scene. Part of the reason it works so well, I think, is because Walt hasn't really changed all that much -- he's just allowed his generosity and compassion to take over his bitterness. I found my feelings about this movie reflected perfectly in a blog entry by Roger Ebert recently. Despite the obvious set-up of Gran Torino, I was won over by Eastwood's performance, the film's sincerity, and I allowed myself to be moved because at the end, I was convinced that "there is a good person, doing a good thing."