Up from machismo: at 78, Clint's still kickin' ass

Rating: 8/10 (30 December 2008)

Well-seasoned filmmakers are no rarity these days. The Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira is still working at 100. Though a mere 78, Clint may be the most prolific and the feistiest of the senior helmers. The last six years have been an Eastwoodian renaissance. His relatively perfunctory 'Blood Work' was followed by an outstanding quartet: 'Mystic River,' 'Million Dollar Baby,' 'Flags of Our Fathers,' and 'Letters of Iwo Jima.' And now in one year, 'Changeling' and 'Gran Torino.'
In the latter, written by newcomers Dave Johansson and Nick Schenk, Clint not only directs but stars as curmudgeonly senior citizen Walt Kowalski--who emerges as a culturally sensitized but still confrontational Dirty Harry. Walt is a retired auto worker who presides disapprovingly over his wife's funeral as the film opens. He's not impressed by the young priest. He has no use for his smug sons or his greedy, piercing-adorned, disrespectful granddaughter, whom the camera catches text-messaging during the priest's funeral oration. Walt ushers one son and daughter-in-law out of the house on his birthday, with the presents they have brought, when they suggest he consider moving to a retirement community. All the Polish and Irish people have moved out of the Detroit neighborhood where Walt has long lived. Now his neighbors are Hmong people he sniffs at and addresses indiscriminately as "slope" or "nip" or "chink."
Walt never drops the epithets. He considers them an essential aspect of manly banter and enjoys tossing them back and forth with his barber and a construction boss friend. But any implied racism melts away when members of a Hmong gang begin to harass his young neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) and force Thao to attempt the theft of Walt's vintage Gran Torino automobile as part of his initiation. Walt, a decorated Korean War vet, confronts Thao with a rifle and saves his car. But later he drives away the gang at gunpoint to protect Thao from its harassing him further.
These two events have a whole string of consequences. Henceforth the gang has it in for both Thao and Walt. Thao's family showers Walt with ritual offerings of food and flowers. Walt is now seen as a neighborhood friend and protector of the Hmong. Thao's bolder and more outspoken sister Sue (Bee Vang) latches onto Walt too. Walt learns to love Hmong cooking and discovers he has more in common with his "slope" neighbors than with his own sons. Thao, who is fatherless, is commanded by his mother to work for Walt to compensate for the attempted theft, and a mentoring and bonding process begins.
In 'Gran Torino' Clint gets to play a reformed bigot, mentor, and senior citizen Dirty Harry all in one person. He speaks in a hoarse whisper that can modulate from a mild roar to a purr to a bark. Maybe this movie serves as a kind of apologia and justification for the simplicities of the Dirty Harry series. It adds complexities and nuances, but then it undercuts them by still bringing out the guns and resolving issues in violent confrontations.
The man is truly remarkable. The movie is unusual in its combination of racist slurs, decency, and revenge. But in all accuracy the solution Walt finds is not revenge but a sacrificial correction that insures his neighbors' future. Still, if Walt Kowalski's behavior is taken literally he'll hardly come off as a good role model for anyone. The movie deserves credit for pointing to the problem of Asian (and specifically Hmong) gangs. Among the Hmong, Sue says, "the girls go to college, the boys go to jail." Gran Torino was shot in a few weeks. The Hmong cast is authentic, but not all are great actors. The ending is something out of the Westerns, with a new twist. Much of the move is like an instructional film on multi-ethnic understanding and family relations. It's good hearted but simplistic and not ultra polished, despite the pros in the crew and at the helm.
There is a secondary theme involving the young priest who presides at the funeral of Walt's wife. He's called Father Janovich, for some reason, though he's played by the very Irish-looking Christopher Carley. Walt tells him to his face he has no use for him. He tells him he's a "kid," "fresh out of the seminary," an "overeducated, 27-year-old virgin who holds the hands of superstitious old ladies and promises them eternity." As far as Walt can see this kid knows nothing about birth and death. By film's end the boyish clergyman and Walt have come to terms and the younger man has learned something. As time goes on Walt is clearly ill, yet he continues his hard drinking and his cigarette smoking. His life isn't very happy. Maybe that's why he's willing to go for broke in defense of his Hmong neighbors. The realities of his situation are something the simplistic screenplay, which resembles a TV program of pre-cable days, does not choose to delve into. But whatever its faults, 'Gran Torino' has the same kind of strong, sterling simplicity the director displayed in 'Million Dollar Baby,' which he also starred in as well as directed.
This is the year for the Hmong in America to get noticed, it seems. There is a detailed, rich documentary about a Laotian Hmong family and their life in the USA that came out a few months ago, Ellen Kurras' 'The Betrayal (Nerakhoon).' The impact of the gangs on Hmong families is shown there too. But there's no Clint to come to the rescue.