The marketplace may be rather cluttered with dramatic awards season fare this time of year, but there’s one very convincing reason to see “Gran Torino” immediately: Clint Eastwood.
Besides the actor, other reasons include a thoroughly engaging plot about a curmudgeonly and racist widower, and a handful of priceless scenes involving Eastwood and members of the Hmong family living next door.
When the film begins, Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski, is at his late wife’s funeral, and although he does not say a word, his facial expression speak volumes about the kind of man he is.
Kowalski is the kind of man who scowls disapprovingly at his greedy sons and their derelict children as they enter the church, condescendingly calls his young priest “padre” and spends his afternoons sitting in a lawn chair on his porch downing beer after beer.
Eastwood’s husky voice and scowl create a dialogue that ““ although seemingly corny in previews ““ is wholly enjoyable, even hilarious at times. Using every racist term in the books (which he says unabashedly to the faces of those whom he is referring to), Kowalski somehow becomes an unlikely and unwilling hero, his bluntness contrasting with a small but genuine glint of compassion.
Kowalski is the kind of man who seems to have a gun of some sort stashed in every drawer of his house, pulling one out conveniently when he sees a disturbance between a local gang and his neighbors happening on his lawn.
Pointing the gun in the gang members’ faces and snarling in a low growl, “Get off my lawn,” he becomes a champion for his neighbors and other Hmong families in the community for scaring away the dangerous bullies, and so begins his subtle transformation.
When the teenage girl in the house next door, Sue, (Ahney Her), manages to match Kowalski’s candor and subsequently invites him to a family get together, the confrontation between him and her family that follows is one of the many million-dollar scenes.
Although his racist tone barely falters, there is an obvious connection between Kowalski and the shy teenage boy, Thao (Bee Vang), who also lives in the house, as he insults him and then gruffly encourages him to talk to a girl sitting near him. The interaction between the downward-gazing boy and the beer-holding old man is both comical and touching, as is the rest of the film.
Both Her and Vang act as refreshing and realistic adolescents who compliment Eastwood’s character, as he takes them both under his wing in a way. It is their presence in his life that sets the stage for the intriguing development of a character that Eastwood can add to his list of top performances.
However, the story is not a simple or sappy one about a man who grows through friendship. Throughout the film, there is the constant threat that something might happen involving the gangs lurking in the neighborhood. As is custom in other Eastwood films, something big does happen and when it does, the event creates a very worthy ending.