Gran Torino

There have been a lot of reviews referencing Dirty Harry in Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood's supposed acting swan song. It's part of what attracted me to the film to be honest. I was brought up on a diet of Eastwood movies, my dad being a major fan. I've seen the Dirty Harry movies many, many times, and I've heard my dad yearn often for a final return to Harry Callahan before it's too late. Well, Gran Torino isn't that film. And although there are references to all those Eastwood hardasses that he's played before in Torino's Walt Kowalski, there's also a bittersweet twist to all that simmering violence that's one of the most suprising things about this movie.
Gran Torino takes it's title from the 1972 Ford automobile parked in Walt's garage, a symbol of an idealised past while Walt spends his days on the front porch, glowering at the immigrants who supposedly threaten his patch of suburban Detroit.
Thao (Bee Vang), the son of the Hmong family from next door tries to boost Walt's car as part of a gang initiation, but when Walt catches him, the boy is forced to work for him. Walt puts him to work doing up the eyesore of a house opposite, and gradually the old man and the boy begin to bond. The thaw continues when Thao's sister, Sue (Ahney Her) stands up to Walt's racial slurs and invites him round to sample her fatherless multi-generational family's food and beer.
If it sounds a little cliched and over-earnest, you're right; it is. Gran Torino's script by newcomer Nick Schenk, is clunky in places and you can hear the gears grinding (no pun intended) at times as the movie changes tone and mood. Only Eastwood's surefire direction keeps the movie on track at times.
Initially Walt is Dirty Harry in the suburbs, it's true; when the gangbangers invade on Walt's territory, Eastwood cocks his rifle, squints at them down the barrel and growls: "GET. OFF. MY. LAWN." Then when, the same gang attack Thao after his first day at a job that Walt has arranged for him, Walt heads over, waits them out and stands on the head of the last guy left until he gets the message.
But what makes Gran Torino more than the sum of it's parts is the ending that turns that myth of the cliched Eastwood hero on it's head. It's an audacious and bittersweet twist that more than makes up for the earlier lapses in the script.
It goes without saying that Eastwood is terrific. He takes the caricature of the obnoxious and bigotted curmudgeon Walt and infuses him with subtlety and a sly humour. Now, as much as any time in his prime, Eastwood is a magnetic prescence on the screen, one of the last Hollywood legends. He also elicits some excellent performances from the first timer Hmong cast; both Bee Vang and Ahney Her more than a match for the 78 year old veteran on his swan song.
Gran Tornio is no Unforgiven. Although both movies flirt with similar themes, Torino is a little generic, a little too simple and predictable. But its final act that flirts with the notion of the Eastwood hardman, cleaning up the neighbourhood for one last time, only to turn into something far more moving and redemptive is more than enough to be a fitting close to the man's acting career, and more than enough to recommend it.