2009-08-31

Gran Torino

[4.5 stars] [IMDB Rating: 8.4] [Tomatometer: 79%] [Amazon Link]

The IMDB trivia page claims that Clint Eastwood maintains that this will be the last movie he acts in. Sob! Say it ain't so, Clint!

Clint plays Walt Kowalski, a crusty retired autoworker living in a decaying Detroit neighborhood. Things aren't going well: (1) His wife has just died; (2) And (worse) before she died, she forced the local priest to ask Walt to make confession; (3) His curmudgeonly hardass ways have estranged him from his family; (4) A Hmong family has moved in next door, and Walt sees them as "gooks", much like the ones who he fought in Korea; (5) Gangs of various ethnicities prowl the streets; (6) His health is deteriorating; (7) One of the Hmongs, the teenage boy Thao, tries to swipe Walt's prize possession, a gleaming 1972 Ford Gran Torino.

But on the other hand, his dog likes him.

Unsurprisingly, underneath the irascible bigoted exterior is a man of bravery and character. Walt develops a relationship with the Hmong family, and tries to save Thao from dead-end gang membership.

As I type, IMDB users rate Gran Torino #81 on their Top 250 movies of all time. I don't know about that, but it is pretty good. As I pointed out at the time it got pretty much snubbed by the Oscars, yet another data point in favor of the view that the Oscars are increasingly useless.

Posted 2009-08-31 6:00 PM EDT
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