Only Clint Can make "Get off My Lawn" sound like "Make My Day"
a fan of clever plots, a movie lover, Lovin' the Clint
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JAN
27
2009
Gran Torino —
In his latest and most assuredly one of his greatest films, 78 year old icon Clint Eastwood fails to do what a great many old men might and play it safe. Instead, he tells the parable of a cantankerous, mean-as-hell old man who, upon his first meeting with his "gook" neighbors (his words, not mine), insists they "get the hell off my lawn". See, Walt Kowalski is a racist Korean War vet retired auto worker with skeletons in his closet and he has kept one particular bony man in there so long it has turned him into a bitter old man who seems to love nothing but his restored 1972 Gran Torino, his faithful old dog, the memory of his wife and all the Pabst Blue Ribbon he can get keep stuffed in his Coleman cooler.As Gran Torino opens, we find Walt at the funeral of his dear wife, standing beside her casket, scowling like Dirty Harry (in fact, as played by Eastwood, Walt just might be Harry Callahan in the witness protection program) at his two sons, who talk about him right there in the church pews as though he were some old pain in the ass who can't see how the world has moved on. In turn he views them as a couple of overweight slobs with skewered value systems. It doesn't help, in his eyes, they raised rude (the granddaughter shows up at the funeral with her belly button ring showing and texts on her cell phone during the service), narcissistic, greedy grand children. To top it all off, he considers the eulogy given by young parish priest Father Janovich to be shallow and naive.
If all that weren't bad enough, a Hmong family has just moved in next door. Truth is, Mr. Kowalski is just about the only white man left in the old neighborhood and so he sits on his front porch, determined to protect what little bit of "America" he deems is left here. He's alone in the world, for even his sons hardly come around anymore, except to ask for something or to try and get him to move into a retirement community.
Everything begins to change, however, when a local Hmong gang assaults the new neigbor's kid, Thao(Bee Vang) on the front lawn, and it spills over onto Walt's property. The fight comes to a screeching halt when one of the thugs finds himself face to face with the old man and the business end of a shotgun. That gang member mistakes Kowalski for a feeble old man and barks at him to "go back in the house!". Channeling Dirty Harry, Walt growls back, "Yea? I blow a hole in your face and then I go in the house... and I sleep like a baby. You can count on that. We used to stack f**** like you five feet high in Korea... use you for sandbags." At that the gang members scurry back to their little car like so many cockroaches and peel off into the afternoon. When the family tries to thank him for saving Thao, Walt grunts that he only wanted to get the "gooks" off his property. Archie Bunker would have been proud.
In spite of this reply, the whole neighborhood sees Walt as a hero and, much to his chagrin, they begin to parade themselves to his doorstep, leaving food and gifts. And, Thao's sister Sue Lor (wonderfully played by Ahney Her) pesters him to come over for a party, undaunted by his free use of racial slurs toward their family. He finally relents when he realizes he's run out of Pabst Blue Ribbon and she assures him they have plenty of better. At the party he runs into the family shaman who, he observes, seems to know him better than his own family. He also comes to realize, after mingling a bit, while these people have many cultural differences from him, as human beings they are a lot like him, without the bitterness and anger.
Events continue conspiring to cause Walt to become linked to these people. He comes upon a group of black thugs assaulting Sue Lor and he gets involved because he's not one of those people who can watch others be harmed and not do anything about it. It also enrages him that her white boyfriend(played by Eastwood's son) is cowering and doing nothing to help. This group, too mistakes him for a helpless old man, and he again conjures the ghost of Harry Callahan, telling them, "Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have F**** with? That's me." And, after it's discovered Thao attempted to steal his beloved Grand Torino as a gang initiation right, Sue brings her brother over to regain her family's honor by working to Walt for a week.
There are comic moments in the film. Walt takes Thao to his local barber in an attempt to teach him the fine art of "talking like a man" and the results are just wrong, but hysterically so. And Thao's job interview with a local construction boss is similarly amusing.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Clint Eastwood continues his amazing string of well directed, interesting movies by doing what he does best, focusing on the humans involved and the complexities of their interaction. As Walt's neighbors slowly become the family he never really had, you can almost see the lines in his face, etched there by years of bitterness and anger, soften as his spirit becomes renewed and the racism melts away. Grand Torino is not a platitude about the errors of stereotyping and hate but is, instead, the story of a lonely man who closed off his heart many years ago only to find a reason to open it up again in the most unexpected of places. The ending to this story of redemption is a foregone conclusion, sort of. But it's the journey along the way that will put a smile on your face. GRADE: A
Last edited on Jan 27, 2009
Gran Torino is recommended by MikeMaroon
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