Grandpa's missed gun-shot.

Rating: 6/10 (16 September 2009)

I am an ardent fan of Clint. I like his 'casual' way of narrating a story in his Mystic River, Unforgiven, Letters from Iwo Jima and Million Dollar Baby. But he failed in his attempt in this hasty attempted made-up-classic. I particularly hate this film because of its 'anti-communist' odor. I figured it was deliberate though subtle. Almost all of 'Hollywood films' have a habit of portraying 'communism'='anti-social' right from their James Bonds to Rambo s. I grew up with these films from my childhood. And now.. sorry my respected grandpa... If every one of you say say it is 'evil' then something is terribly wrong.
Story: Walt(Clint) is a Vietnam war veteran in his 75s. He lives a lonely life confined only to his wife and two kids. Now his wife expires. Then he comes out of his 'family' shell of all these years; left alone at his home; his kids got married and moved away and particularly interested in Clint's house than himself. Now he begins to look around his neighbourhood which is fully occupied by Asians(Hmongs) irritatingly. Him seeing Hmongs whom he thinks as 'Chinks' he fought against in Vietnam and hates them (gooks). The generation gap of him being an old-timer who is very rude and demands high respect also separates him from the youngsters who are around. A teenage Hmong girl next door befriends him and his relationship with the Hmong neighbourhood flourishes as he plays accidentally the 'guardian' role of these people from a 'local-Hmong-Rowdy' gang. Before he starts to know them he takes a major life-threatening-risk to save them. The story ends abruptly here before it floats. Oh..The Gran Torino. It was the 1972 car he bought and kept it as a treasure of his own, which the local-gang plans to steal, and everything results from it.
Hmong people. One of the ill-fated people in history. They were tribes living in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The US used(hired ?) them as 'mercenaries' in Vietnam War against their own people. The ill-fate here is the usage of an ethnic group against their own. I suspect the ignorance/illiteracy of Hmong people easily trapped them into standing against their own people/freedom. Who trapped them ? The US. When US lost the war they just returned 'back to their land' leaving these people 'in their own land'. Hmong people were obviously the traitors and they might have been brutally killed in thousands. And they were killed after the war by the Laos Communist Govt. Several thousands of them migrated to California.
The movie is politically motivated and hence loses its 'story value' as a pure story. If those people whom Clint encounters were not Hmong people then story would have been better because it does not have anything to deal with any 'politics' in this story. Hmongs story plays a dirty politics of 'praising Hmongs as people who fought as allies of US for their freedom'(whose freedom in whose land ?). And that leads to Clint 'fighting for Hmongs freedom in the free country'. Alas..
All Walt deals-with in this film are inter-personal-communal relationships; personal emotions; humanitarian views. I got very disappointed by this biased portrayal of American Nationalism, by my beloved director Clint Eastwood. I feel very sad that all his acting and narration have gone wasted because Walt so quickly convinced to a life-changing-decision for some people whose existence he never cared just a month back.
I hoped to give more higher rating until I heard the word Hmong.