Gran Torino (2009, Warner Bros.)
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I enjoy a nice Unforgiven viewing as much as the next guy, but I’ve never really bought into the whole cult of Clint — for movies that are supposed to disassemble and analyze the various aspects of American manhood, Eastwood’s films often strike me as curiously dull. During A Perfect World, for instance — a movie I went to see knowing full well that Kevin Costner was Eastwood’s co-star, and hoping two negatives would produce a positive — I’m fairly certain I had an out of body experience, during which my spirit floated to the ceiling of the nearly empty theater and took a long nap. I went into Gran Torino, in other words, expecting very little; I certainly didn’t plan to feel a bitter swell of nostalgia as the closing credits rolled. But life is full of surprises, and as it turns out, Clint — and by extension Gran Torino — has a few too.
Billed in advance as a sort of unofficial sequel to the Dirty Harry movies, Torino stars Eastwood as Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker who, as the movie opens, is in attendance at his wife’s funeral. It quickly becomes clear that aside from his dearly departed better half, Walt wants very little to do with anyone — not his kids, nor their kids, nor the young, well-meaning priest that reluctantly promised Walt’s wife he’d look after him. And certainly not the families on his street, which no longer have familiar Polish surnames; Walt’s neighborhood has changed, with an influx of Hmong immigrants replacing the solidly Caucasian blue-collar demographic with which he identifies. He’s a grumpy, openly racist old man, but Nick Schenk’s screenplay does a better job of generating empathy for the character than you might think; surrounded by clueless kids, grasping grandchildren, and neighbors who seem to have no pride in their homes, Walt comes across at first as a sort of seething, epithet-spouting version of Dick Loudon, the character Bob Newhart played on Newhart, a guy who feels like the last oasis of sanity in a world gone mad. (more…)
Clint Eastwood is having the last sneer on the Oscars. As three of the five best picture nominees struggle for a box office bounce (and one, The Reader, has become a laughingstock, the poster child for questionable taste among led-by-the-nose Academy Award voters) his latest, and presumably last as an actor, Gran Torino, is pulling up at the $100 million mark and will easily outperform the others. It’s the only one of the highly touted December releases still drawing crowds in a January that has gone to the (Hotel for) Dogs and bear-hugged Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Critics mostly adore it, as they have just about every Eastwood picture since the long-time pariah was welcomed into the church of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with 1992’s Unforgiven.
Gran Torino finally opened to wide release this weekend, and rapidly earned the number one spot at the box office.