Gran Torino

Gran Torino
Review by Brett McCracken | posted 12/12/08

Gran Torino Rated R (for language throughout, and some violence) Genre: Drama, Action Theater release: December 12, 2008 by Warner Brothers Directed by: Clint Eastwood Runtime: 116 minutes Cast: Clint Eastwood (Walt Kowalski), Christopher Carley (Father Janovich), Bee Vang (Thao), Ahney Her (Sue), John Carroll Lynch (Barber Martin) Related: • Talk About It/Family Corner • What Others Are Saying

The first time I saw the trailer for this film in a theater, the audience laughed. It portrayed a senile, furrow-browed Clint Eastwood brandishing a gun and barking at Asian people to "get off my lawn." Was this Dirty Harry: The Retirement Years? Thankfully, no. As it turns out, Gran Torino is surprisingly earnest—a film that is funny and angry and sad for all the right reasons, and remarkably well timed. As 2008 comes to close—and with it many things—Gran Torino captures the zeitgeist as eloquently as anything possibly could.

The title of this film, directed and starring Clint Eastwood, refers to a '70s-era American muscle car, and the story is set in Detroit, at a time when the shrinking, suffering American auto industry—coupled with rising crime and changing demographics—has left everything slightly run-down and depressed. Walt Kowalski (Eastwood), a Korean war vet who worked 50 years for Ford—lives in a Detroit neighborhood full of front-porch, paint-peeled, post-war houses now inhabited by immigrants and aging widowers. The place is rife with the ghosts of a simpler, booming time—when Ford's assembly line was a symbol of the efficient homogeneity of life after the wars, when white picket fences and neighborhood barbers infused everything with a decidedly homegrown, rust-belt patriotism.

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I really enjoyed this movie. My three sons and I went to see Gran Torino on Christmas Day in the evening, this is a family tradition. We are all Clint Eastwood fans and have enjoyed his movies. The movie was shot in the metropolatian Detroit area so it was enjoyable to recognize some of the places the movie was shot. If you read the rest of the review you will get a better feel for the movie. I know at the end of the movie I had some tears and the biblical picture was easy to see. Growing up in the 1950's the racial language brought back memories of a very different time. The language may keep some away but it gets two thumbs up from me.