Eastwood Wears Prejudices on His Sleeve

Rating: 2/10 (4 August 2011)

A surprisingly shallow way for Clint Eastwood's cinematic career to draw to a close, Gran Torino may have been better served with a more thick-witted title, something along the lines of "Bitter Old Man Points Guns at Minorities." Not that there isn't fertile ground for exploration along these lines; Eastwood's isolated, closed-minded widower could have been an excellent vehicle for prodding a number of inherent stereotypes present in modern American suburbia. Instead of meeting those issues head-on, though, it spends most of its time walking up and down the sidelines and, often, reinforcing the kind of bull-headed resistance to different cultures that, at the outset, it seemed ready to confront. I had a hard time accepting any of this film's main players as anything more than thin caricatures, especially considering the bland, straightforward dialog they're given to work with, and that resulted in a major emotional disconnect during the climax. Eastwood's jaded war veteran never seems to move completely beyond his biases and, shamefully, the film's resolution only serves to prove him right. A plodding, incomplete picture that will only be remembered for the single quotable line heard in its trailer.