Review: Gran Torino

3.5/5

As a swansong to his acting career, Clint Eastwood has picked a role that comes full circle back to his beginnings as an actor.

He defined the role of the man with no name in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and created the perfect anti-hero as Inspector Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry.
In Gran Torino, he plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran who doesn’t understand what has happened to the world around him.

His sons can’t stand him, his grandkids are only interested in their inheritance and his neighbourhood has become a picture of the sort of cultural diversity that defines modern America.

Walt’s a racist with a penchant for naming everyone according to their ethnicity. The ‘guks’ or ‘slopes’ are his Asian neighbours, his Italian barber is a ‘dago’ and his Irish construction friend is a ‘mick’.

The Gran Torino of the title is the car that is his pride and joy. He keeps it as a trophy to show what America used to make and what they have lost in the economic depressions that have affected many cities, in particular Detroit, where the film is based.

Living in his neighbourhood, the Asian community are as suspicious of him as he is of them. But this changes when Walt stands up to the gangs roaming the area and so becomes a hero to the very people he cannot stand.

The young Asian boy next door, with no father figure and with a mother and sister who dominate him, becomes Walt’s last act of redemption. He’s going to make him into a man, if it kills him. This may sound cheesy and predictable but it’s not.

Clint Eastwood directs the film with the same sparse finesse that has seen the last few years produce four Oscar nominated films from him.

It’s funny and tender without becoming unbelievable although the performances of the two Asian teenagers (Bee Vang as Thao and Ahney Her as Sue), who have never acted before, may fall short at times.

The acting of Clint Eastwood as Walt and Christopher Carley as the local Catholic priest Father Janovich more than make up for it.

While the pace is slow and at times left me wondering when something was going to happen, overall the film washes over you without you knowing it.

The ending that may seem inevitable still comes as a shock and leaves you wanting something different to satisfy the vigilante in all of us.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable film and definitely worth the price of the cinema ticket, not only to see a screen great finish off his career in style.