Looked promising but alas!

Rating: 4/10 (19 August 2013)

Like most others, I like Clint Eastwood as both an actor and a director (at least from around the year 2000 onwards). "Million dollar baby" and "Changeling" were two quite lovely films to give just two examples of him as a director. "Gran Torino" definitely had its strong points, and I enjoyed the themes of misplaced racism, and how it sucks the joy out of life, the unsolvable problem with gangs, and the need to get your problems off your chest instead of keeping them inside. I also liked the pale colours of this film (just like in Changeling), which was perfect for this bleak environment. But the problem for me with this film was simply that it wasn't very credible.
The main character Walt (Eastwood himself) used a lot of foul language, but as he did so in almost every sentence and so overtly, it simply ended up becoming a caricature. At one point his son and daughter in law came to Walt's birthday and suggested that he moved into a nursing home. The camera then filmed a close-up of Eastwood, whose mouth opened and turned downwards more and more in a fit of rage. It just seemed like something from a comic book. Eastwood is one of the archetypical tough guys, but here he simply seemed like a parody of himself. Later, Eastwood dropped a glass of alcohol as he was shocked. It just fell to the ground all too late for it to seem like a believable reaction and not one done by an actor in a poor film (it will make sense if you watch the scene). This is of course a minor detail, but it honestly seemed to suggest that there hadn't been paid enough attention to the editing and the artistic effects used in creating a story that would seem real rather than just a story. This surprised me a bit, as I didn't notice anything like this in the two other Eastwood film mentioned above.
One of the other actors, Bee Vang playing Thao, was even worse. He simply didn't give a very good performance. Especially when he was locked into the basement, his hammering on the door simply didn't seem real.
Lastly, I didn't find it believable that Walt warmed to the Hmong people because of the reasons shown in the film. It seemed credible that he would help the neighbouring girl when she was in trouble with a gang on the street, but he still a bit too easily went from banning all Hmong people from his property to accepting the neighbouring girl's dinner invitation with her entire family simply because they had beer and because the girl was "alright" as he said. Nevertheless, this was something that I could easily have overlooked if the rest of the film had been better – they are after all trying to tell a story, and there has to be some progress.
With better dialogue, better acting and a slightly better script, this film could have made me feel something real rather than make me cringe – which is what it too often did.
Judging from the average rating here on IMDb most people love this film, but I've also seen several people here on IMDb say exactly the same things as I have done in this review (acting, dialogue, etc.), so it seems to be a film that splits the viewers in two camps. I find that if I don't like an otherwise celebrated film it's simply because I didn't become engaged in the story or the characters. But usually I just find films like that mediocre and I can see why other people might like them, and usually I can see that they are well-made and well-acted. Two examples could be Crash or Magnolia. They simply didn't do anything for me. They were well-made, well-acted, and I understand why people like them. But calling them poor films or even poorly made? Certainly not! It's rare that I find an otherwise celebrated film poor, but Gran Torino seems to be a film that people either find excellent or poor. I'm standing on the edge of saying poor (which is 3/10 for me), but due to it's good points I will give it 4/10.