Gran Torino made my day

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2012)

From the first scenes it is obvious Dirty Harry is back, older but just as tough. But we soon find there is a humorous and even gentle side to Walt.
As he starts to develop a relationship, such as it is, with his Hmong neighbors, he remains gruff, but gradually softens. And as he does so, you have to laugh, for some reason.
"These Hmong broads are like badgers," he mutters to himself.
It's not easy to do the Dirty Harry sneer. Just try it. It requires underplaying. And doing it while bringing a chuckle or smile is great acting. You suspect there is another Walt underneath, winking at you.
The proof that his tough, racist talk is a front, even a running joke, comes when he takes Tao to the barber, telling him just before they enter, "Now you're gonna learn how guys talk. You just listen to how Martin and I banter back and forth." What follows is some of the most foul, racist epithets you could imagine. And you realize it is a way for minorities to toughen themselves up, including Walt.
"Perfect, a pollack AND a chink," says the "Italian" barber as they walk in.
It is emotional armor plating. You see parallels in the displays of toughness by the Hmong gang, the black gang and the white boyfriend. Perhaps it is part of the American immigrant experience. It is part of Walt, that tough guy demeanor. But he doesn't have anything to prove; he knows it is an act, and isn't. His is not the tough front hiding a coward, like the gangs.
The movie can also be painfully sad, as when he finally goes to the doctor and encounters a woman, Dr. Chang, in place of his old doctor who retired three years before. Along with the foreign nurse who can't even pronounce his name and the other foreigners in the waiting room, you can begin to feel the aging Walt's pain in seeing his world crumble beneath him. Imagine all that you had known since childhood and adulthood changed almost beyond recognition. It is his equivalent to the Hmong trying desperately to hold onto their old world traditions.
What counts is not the color or language or dress, but the values. Good manners are important to Walt. But even more is being a good, hard working American. He sees his children losing those values, but he finds them again in the new immigrants, who come to mean more to him than his family. He has purpose in his life, again.
As Tao is locked in the basement you see Walt through the metal screen finally admitting what happened in Korea.
"Not a day goes by that I don't think about it," he confesses, as he prepares for the showdown. "You don't want that on your soul."
You feel Walt's pain. You feel a lot of emotions as the film progresses. And, at the end, you feel redemption.
A great film is not to be found simply in a storyline. It is found in the characters, whom you get to know and understand and care about. And, most of all, it is in the character development. That is the strength of Gran Torino. However, there is something more.
Gran Torino is a statement about America and what it means to be an American. To think it is about racism in America would be a big mistake; after all, this is a film by an American. If anything, I feel, America, because of its long history of diversity, has moved beyond intolerance more than most countries; the Hmong moved to America because they were victims of genocide in Asia, remember? So don't go calling America racist; there's a big difference between foul language and genocide. The movie is saying you can find racism anywhere, in any group. Yes, it is a call for understanding and tolerance.
But what it is really saying is we are all immigrants, or our ancestors were, and many were refugees, like the Hmong; that's what the Statue of Liberty is about. When the torch is passed to a new generation, sometimes they are a new immigrant group. It is up to them not simply to be "good Americans," but to be good human beings, to care about your neighbors and your community, to see beyond superficial differences and become part of that melting pot we call America.
In the first drive by shooting, the Hmong didn't talk to police, staying apart, as was their custom. In the second shooting, they did, and the police finally had witnesses, plenty of them. They were no longer Hmong, they were Americans. That was Walt's legacy. That must have really made Walt's day.