MOVIE REVIEW: GRAN TORINO

GRAN TORINO

Six of Seven Cows

 

 

It’s a shame that Hollywood thinks so little of us. We rubes can’t be expected to turn out to see a nuanced, mature, suspenseful, often vulgar, sometimes funny and sometimes sweet rumination on cross-cultural conflict and the invincibility of relentless good nature. No, we’re not bright enough to want to see that, especially if it stars Clint Eastwood. The only way to lure us to the theaters for that kind of film is to market it as the sixth coming of Dirty Harry, complete with Eastwood hissing “Get off my lawn” with the same sort of menace with which he once said, “Go ahead, make my day.”

            

What a shame. The even bigger shame is that Hollywood’s probably correct. We don’t flock to the theaters to see serious films, at least not with the predictability so beloved by tinsel-town’s bean counters. Well, if that’s what it takes to lure you to see Gran Torino, then so be it. You will not be sorry.

             

Gran Torino, both starring and directed by Eastwood, is as happy a surprise as I’ve had in a theater. In it Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet and the last white holdout in a neighborhood gone Asian. Foul-mouthed, bitter, and superficially-racist, Kowalski seethes with contempt at all that has become of his world, his family, and his life.

            

When a neighbor’s run-in with a local Asian gang spills over into his yard, Kowalski is forced into their world in ways that are, yes, suspenseful, but also surprising. Gran Torino is a type of movie rarely seen; sort of the opposite of film noir, where a series of events compels a character on a dark and inevitably perilous trajectory. Instead, in Torino the insertion of Eastwood’s character into the neighbor’s troubles sends him on an arc that is every bit as inevitable and perilous, and yet redemptive and life affirming. It’s a neat trick.

            

The catalyst for this redemptive turn is the delightful Sue Lor, played by Ahney Her, and in many ways she is the most important character in the film. Eastwood’s Kowalski is a crusty old fossil, and for the audience to believe that he’s being charmed out of his preconceptions the charmer has to be, well, charming. Lor is that, for sure. When confronted by Kowalski’s racist blustering she absolutely refuses to be shocked, offended, or disliked. She is a jewel. There is a lesson for us in this.

            

The rest of the cast is just as good, and I wish I had two pages to tell you all the other reasons you need to see Gran Torino. This movie is replete with messages, sometimes troubling but mostly positive, from it’s opening funeral scene to the Christ-on-the-cross pose near the end. The worst reason of all to go is the silly Dirty Harry meets Chance the Gardner preview, but if that’s what it takes to get you to see it, so be it. I give Gran Torino six cows.