They don't make 'em like this any more. Cars, that is.

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2009)

***This comment definitely contains spoilers***
'Gran Torino' presses all the buttons it aims to, and joins old-time Western movie values with contemporary issues in a comfortably liberal way. The ending is nice and resonant, though the final funeral and will-reading scenes were probably too much. Just show Thao driving the GT with the dog, huh? And without the singing. For a moment, I thought he had a tape of Walt in the car.
A lot of people who marked this down seem not to understand Walt's motivation to change, which I suppose is a script shortcoming. When Walt gets the report back from the doctor and then tries to talk kindly to his son for the first time in years, the message you're supposed to get is that he's looking at weeks, months at best till he joins his dead wife, and I don't think the horror of that finality comes across as well as it should have. Walt's reaction to the news - which was really no reaction at all - was true to life, but cinematically dull. Whatever Walt was ill with (strong hints at advanced lung cancer) is left unresolved, and that doubt and his indifference somehow undermines the ultimate passionate decisiveness of his character. It must have been a deliberate decision to let the ending resolve that doubt, but I think this is a dilution of the theme, and the film suffers for it.
It's not a ground-breakingly original film, it's not supposed to be. It's very solid, nicely photographed, wistful and warming comfort food, with some wry and sharp lines from Clint peppering it throughout, and there are some wild allegorical touches to think about in the odd slow bit (like the whole somewhat formulaic priest thing). Gran Torino does a good job of triggering emotions at all the right points, and we should be thankful for the fact that people are still making movies with that in mind. You'll hate it if you're uncomfortable with having your heartstrings tugged in the old-fashioned way. But then you probably drive a Korean car. Me, I drive a 25-year old Mercedes. Get off my property!