Clint at his best in a superior offering about aging

Rating: 7/10 (27 April 2009)

shades of Eastwood's mentor, Don Siegels' the Shootist (1976) abound here in what could be Eastwoods swansong. Like john Wayne in the aforementioned film, the presence of this films leading star and the connotations associated with the characters from his previous fifty of work, and perhaps more specifically his body of work from 1964 to 1993. Misfit, no nonsense cops, war veterans, bounty hunters and bare knuckle boxers are mashed together create one of Clint's best characters Walt Kowalski.Clint growls his way through the film playing the recently widowed Korean war Veteren who must contend with the local immigrant population. his own family have all but deserted the cantankerous old man, his only solace is found in his 1972 Gran Torino. After a a young Hmong boy , Thao tries to steal it he sets about trying to reform the boy, which leads to him becoming embroiled in the local imigrants problems with the neighbourhood gangs. Those expecting action will be sorely disappointed, but what Eastwood the director does deliver is a poignant, yet never overly sentimental drama. The climax manages to be tense, terse and soberingly realistic