Career-capping performance

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2009)

In Gran Torino, Eastwood's Character, Walt Kowalski, seems to be the embodied repudiation of virtually Eastwood's entire career. Much as Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) and Flags of Our Fathers (2006) examined the impact and aftermath of war and violence from a directorial perspective, Eastwood uses his peerless acting chops in Gran Torino to examine the gunslinger approach to problem-solving  and finds it lacking.
Politically, Eastwood is difficult to get a handle on. His Wikipendia entry states that Eastwood has been registered as a Republican since 1951, supported Richard Nixon in 1968 and John McCain in 2008, and was adamantly pro-business as the (largely undistinguished) mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in the 1980s.
On the other hand, commissioner Eastwood along with Chairman Bobby Shriver (Ah-nold Schwarzenegger's brother-in-law) were instrumental in leading the California State Park and Recreation Commission in its unanimous opposition to a six-lane toll road that would have cut through San Onofre State Beach north of San Diego. Eastwood and Shriver also supported a 2006 lawsuit to block the toll road and urged the California Coastal Commission to reject the project. Given the heavy-handed tactics of the toll road proponents, it isn't hard to believe that these actions led directly to Eastwood and Shriver not being reappointed to the park commission.
What this seems to leave us is an artist who has evolved remarkably through the years. Defying Churchill's oft-quoted alleged witticism about old Liberals having no brain, Eastwood seems to have examined the butcher's bill left by his earlier work  and decided that blazing through life with guns drawn just might not be the best way to conduct one's life.