Eastwood does well but spotty Support

Rating: 6/10 (14 March 2009)

The first half of Gran Torino grated in a bad way. How many more contrived scenes with racial slurs and name calling can story-tellers come up with - it began to remind of Crash unfortunately. Luckily the movie pulls out of it midway to develop an interesting story-line with grumpy-old-racist Wally and his Hmong neighbors. Eastwood is pretty much Oscar-the-Grouch for the whole movie, and the humor is dryly funny at first, but it wears pretty thin after repetition. I didn't think too highly of support acting from the brother Tao and especially the sister Sue , but they deserve a bit of slack being first-timers I suppose. Also, why do lead characters need to die to bring more meaning to things? Awfully clichéd - Wally doesn't need to die. Eastwood is good as Wally - though dry, sarcastic, angry. So it's a mixed bag I thought. If you're an Eastwood fan, you might enjoy it.