Love Your Neighbor as Yourself ...

Rating: 9/10 (9 March 2012)

"Gran Torino" is the prize that Walt Kowalski received, a recognition for his forty-something years as an autoworker in the Ford company. It's big, bad-ass, virile, and 100% made in America  and so is Walt Kowalski.
Walt Kowalski is pure Clint Eastwood, with his deadly stances, recurring growls and unique ability to look mean and mean business when he points his shotgun on you. Indeed, when Walt Kowalski utters his "Get off my lawn" catchphrase, you can see the heart of Dirty Harry fiercely burning in his eyes, you understand he would defend his property as zealously as Harry for San Francisco's citizens, and that his shotgun is no less menacing than a certain legendary Magnum. This is the Eastwood way, and it's a remarkable credit to his talent that he was able to create such an unforgettable character after Dirty Harry, The Man With No Name, William Munny, to name a few.
But the film needed a less bigger-than-life, more ordinary character, if that word could ever been used to describe Eastwood (which man wouldn't dream of looking like him at his late 70's?). The principal issue tackled by "Gran Torino" is the innate loneliness of a man lost in his era, the product of a generation born with a certain idea of America, life, men and women. Walt is the typical macho conservative; he enjoys beer, sitting in his balcony with his dog and hanging out with buddies to exchange some crude, racist and homophobic jokes. He's grumpy by nature but the loss of his wife made things even worse and widened the gap between him and his family. The movie opens with his wife's funeral and you can tell how disgusted he is by his grandchildren's playful and insolent behavior. Yet his anger is only an expression of lucidity; he knows he's just a senile old fool for both adults and kids and a promising heritage  with four wheels.
And it's important that we share this lucidity because racism in movies is the least likely trait to inspire sympathy yet Eastwood makes it work. Indeed, in the specific case of Walt, if we don't empathize, at least we understand that the man is not viscerally racist but just distant from whatever underlines a difference: his own family is different, let alone strangers. And Walt is so alienated that he can't perceive difference among the others and therefore display an equal level of hostility toward everyone. He fought Koreans in the 50's and like many others narrow-minded bigots, he doesn't make any difference between Japanese, Chinese or Koreans, and although Sue, the sensitive neighbor who felt there was something good inside Walt's heart, insisted that the Hmong are a mountain people from Laos, Walt couldn't care less. They all are 'gooks' or 'chinks', or in the best case 'strangers'.
Sue plays a pivotal role as an open-minded girl who understands that Walt's heart is not such an unreachable wall of stones. In the beginning, when the Hmong settle, a simple look at Walt's face gives us an idea about his thought, and the movie flirts with comedy by creating a sort of tacit rivalry between him and the Hmong grandma, when she spitted on the ground, the audience cheered in the theater as if Walt found his match. People genuinely loved Walt not for what he was but despite what he showed to be. He exuded a virile charisma so magnetic that all the meanness was pardonable. Only Eastwood could embody this mix of macho toughness and poignant loneliness. And ironically, this loneliness would eventually cement the friendship with Thao, Sue's younger brother, a calm and studious adolescent and an easy target for his delinquent cousins.
Thao represents the total opposition with Walt in every single aspect: culture, generation, personality, they couldn't be more different. But they have one thing in common: they are loners, not by necessity, it's in them. Walt is a stranger for his own Family, as is Thao, surrounded by women and a domineering sister. His manipulability leads him to Walt when he's ordered to steal the Gran Torino for his cousins. Walt forgives but in the Hmong's tradition, it would take more to redeem Thao's action: he must work for Walt. The insistence of the Family wins over Walt's reluctance, and seals the beginning of a bond that would become more and more palpable, even if it's never explicitly expressed. And through the Hmong, Walt discovers a part of himself that was probably repressed for a long time and that put the whole meaning of strangers into perspective as he embraces the curious traditions of his neighbors. And the characterization and interaction featured in the second act are a remarkable example of great film-making as Eastwood found the perfect dosage between sweetness and drama in the mentor/tutorship relationship with Thao.
Of course, Eastwood knew we'd know that a hard nose like Walt wouldn't be utterly bad, there had to be a heal to conceal, and that was the hidden element the late Mrs. Kowalski sensed and asked the youngish Father Janovich to discover. While Janovich was immediately dismissed in the opening funeral, he discovered a new Walt capable of opening his heart at the end. But even this aspect is dealt in a clever and unpredictable way. Stereotypical situations wouldn't have ruined the spirit of the film though, because from the character of Walt, we also knew the movie wouldn't end with the kind of sappy happy ending. However, the last shot remains a wonderful tribute to the mysterious mechanisms of love, as we understand what the Gran Torino is about, and only Clint Eastwood could have made such an inspiring message about tolerance without sentimentalism.
Who knows? maybe in forty years, we would have a film about an old racist Gulf War veteran who discovers the lifestyle of Muslim neighbors to realize that they are not as bad as they seem.