Gran Torino 3/5 Starring Clint Eastwood, Ahnie Her ‘amp; Bee Vang Directed by Clint Eastwood 116 min.
Well, it finally happened. Clint Eastwood is no longer dreamy, even for an old guy ‘mdash; he’s, uh, just plain old. But unlike the other aging starlets that poke, puff and pluck their various imperfections with a $5,000 botch, Eastwood unabashedly embraces the haggard charm of his golden years. Hey, cut the guy some slack ‘mdash; with two Oscars under his cowboy belt and a closet full of Globes, he’s pretty much the baddest old guy in the game.
And that’s what ‘Gran Torino’ is all about, really ‘mdash; a sort of battle cry for the retirement-home bingo game. Whispered to be Eastwood’s last flick, he’s out to remind us that: 1) Crotchety grandpas still kick ass; 2) America, for all its messy follies, still kicks ass; and, most importantly, 3) Clint Eastwood will always, invariably still, kick ass.
While he might star as the porch-howling bigot Walt Kowalski, the Eastwood ghost behind those furrowed eyebrows never truly lifts. He’s there, lurking in the scowl of a veteran who’s lived it all ‘mdash; and that’s why we can never quite hate the absurdly flawed character, even while he’s spitting racial slurs, loathing his fat American family and grumbling at the neighborhood gooks/swamp rats/barbarians to get off his damn lawn already. There’s just something so lovable about the grouch, and it’s because we know that underneath that crusty exterior is Eastwood himself, waiting to unleash his unfailing magic wand.
Maybe that’s why everyone else seems to take Kowalski’s shit with a smile, too. ‘Oh,’ crazy old Walt,’ they chuckle, as he sifts through virtually every politically incorrect insult imaginable. Where another man (or actor, even) might be sentenced wildly inappropriate for this kind of nonsense, Eastwood seems to use it as a last hoorah, in which to say whatever the hell he wants ‘mdash; because, well, he can.
So while it requires a certain suspense of disbelief to accept that one human being could be so secluded from a changing world, the madness is ridiculously fun to watch. So much that, after a while, it doesn’t really matter that the other characters are two-dimensional amateurs, or that the transparent plot takes a back seat to the action. When it comes down to it, we just want to see Clint Eastwood kicking some ass, for old time’s sake.
Written by first-timer Nick Schenk, the screenplay reads like a clunky spaghetti western in some parts and a subtly hilarious drama in others. Regardless, it delivers some of what promise to be the best lines of the new year. This includes a scene in which Kowalski drives through the ‘hood in his prided Torino and notices some thugs harassing his friendly Asian neighbor Sue (Ahney Her). The gang takes no notice of the geezer ‘mdash; until he whips out a loaded .44 rifle and aims it at their heads. ‘Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while that you shouldn’t have messed with?’ he says, grimacing with that uber-famous Elvis snarl. ‘That’s me.’
And the crowd goes wild.
There are only a few things that make Kowalski happy: his graying lab, his cheap beer and his Gran Torino ‘mdash; no fancy stuff. Just a few American familiarities. There are, however, a lot of things that make Kowalski unhappy. Really unhappy, it seems, and for a really long time. The memories of war, the crumbling sidewalks, the increasingly ‘diverse’ neighbors with their colorful language and rickety houses. These people don’t have dogs ‘mdash; they
eat them.
Of course, the neighbors aren’t so different after all, a theme that pushes the movie’s heartfelt heroism, and sometimes pushes us over the edge. But when Sue’s brother Thao (the painfully artificial Bee Vang) attempts to steal the old man’s cherished muscle car, it’s a little far-fetched that it only takes Thao a couple days of honest labor to break down Kowalski’s icy walls of resentment ‘shy;’mdash; well, that and a family of Hmong immigrants placing flowers at his doorstep.
But, like a solid car, Eastwood still gets us from point A to point B with only a few coughs and stumbles. And who are we to complain? The man can do no wrong. Even for a bumpy ride, we’re happy to take the passenger’s seat.