Clint in Detroit

Rating: 9/10 (1 July 2009)

After a career in which he's played cowboys, cops, and a boxing trainer, Clint Eastwood casts himself in a totally different kind of role. He plays Walt Kowalski, a chronically angry Korean War veteran in Detroit. Further embittered after his wife's death, Walt holds a grudge against the Hmong* immigrants next door. But after Walt saves a Hmong boy, it sets his life on an irreversible path.
Whereas it is common for Eastwood to play a tough guy, this role takes a look at the changing America. Walt - who worked in a car factory for years - doesn't like it one bit that his son helps sell Japanese autos. The Hmong community's presence looks at the rising Asian population in the United States. Specifically, the fact that Eastwood set "Gran Torino" in Detroit - as opposed to San Francisco or Los Angeles - bring to mind the Asian communities across the country, and of course the outsourcing of the car industry (which left Detroit impoverished).
All in all, I definitely recommend this movie. If, as Eastwood says, this is his final acting role, then it is a great end for him. Worth seeing.
*The Hmong are a people in Laos. The CIA hired them to grow heroin during the Vietnam War to fight the Pathet Lao (Laos's independence movement), and many had to flee the country after the Pathet Lao took over.