moralistic suburbs melodrama

Rating: 5/10 (28 February 2009)

Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino is one of the less likable good guys recently seen on screen. Recently widowed, retired automobile worker Walt Kowalski is a lonely man, non-communicative neighbor, non-committal Catholic, badly mouthed and with a tendency of racism towards the Asian neighbors who came in numbers to settle his neighborhood. His sense of justice is initially focused towards keeping any other human beings' feet out of his lawn. This until events in the neighborhood will force him take a stand and get him to know the true human face of his neighbors.
The theme of the WASP American confronted with the newcomers in the increasingly multi-racial and multi-cultural society of today's America is the same as in the wonderful 'The Visitor' that I saw a few months ago. Yet, everything that was there subtle, unexpected, hinted, is here in 'Gran Torino' direct and trivial. Eastwood's Kowalski acts as and old incarnation of his cowboy roles three or four decades earlier. His understanding of the neighbors is never in harmony with their culture for which he keeps a permanent disdain, it is always in his own terms. The cultural integration is not perceived as a bilateral and respectful process, but as a series of lessons in 'the American way', meaning rude language and macho behavior. At least the screen story has the wisdom of showing this way as failing in real life. The final resolution of the conflict has a very moralistic tone, with a Christian symbolic nuance that may work on the screen but in real life would be less credible (there is probably more than one gang in that suburb area, right?).
Clint Eastwood is a living legend, and at his age and stature he can do whatever he wants on screen. He does it his way. To my taste, when dealing with the tough problems of inter-racial relations and social problems in the American suburbs his ways do not work too well. It's maybe because the cowboys ways do not work that well in these situations.