Remarkable As Only Eastwood Could Make It

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2009)

This film is a very difficult one to review. It is hard to summarize the plot because everything in it leads to the climax and that is a spoiler.
That which is part of the bonding process between the main character (Eastwood as Walt Kowalski) and Thao (Bee Vang) is safe to talk about, but not the major part of the film.
We are introduced to Kowalski who has spent his entire life post Korea as a mean spirited prejudiced man whose next door neighbors turn out to be people that look to him like those he fought (and killed) in Korea. He does not like them: he wants them to leave him in peace. One day a gang of "zipper heads" comes looking for the young boy Kowalski will later befriend. Kowalski becomes a neighborhood hero when he orders one of the gang members off his property. "Get. Off. My. Lawn!" sounds every bit as menacing as anything Dirty Harry would have said. Kowalski manages to stare the thugs down. It helps that he has a gun in his hands. He begins to realize that these people really appreciate what he has done. He begrudgingly accepts his role as their American protector.
How he gets involved in their lives, how he remains in their lives, how he gets deeper and deeper into their plight, how he first defends what is his and then defends his neighbors is what the film is primarily about as far as the plot is concerned.
It goes much deeper of course. This is a Clint Eastwood film so nothing is as simple as it seems.
There is one thing that few reviewers have taken note of and it is well worth developing. Every so often, Eastwood has to visit the Catholic Church as he did in Million Dollar Baby.
This film presents a priest who is both worldly and very sympathetic in Father Janovich.
Father Janovich begins by trying to fulfill a promise he made to Kowalski's wife. He promised her that he would hear Kowalski's confession. We get the idea that though he is well meaning, he cannot stand up to the horror that Kowalski knows from his war experiences. In fact, he can because he is a humane man who has spent time considering the moral contradictions man is prone to find himself in.
Father Janovich may not know much about violent death, nor about the relationship between men and women (he freely admits to his ignorance of both), but he knows something he does not think Kowalski knows much about, and that is a life that is not so filled with anamousity.
Janovich is interesting because he sympathizes with Kowalski and does his very best to prevent what he knows is inevitable.
We would all like to have such a friend, such a spiritual leader, such a good person as Father Janovich. Kowalski does not hesitate to acknowledge this once he learns what Father Janovich does know.
It is a remarkable film. One well worth its time. I gave it a nine only because I was comparing it to other Eastwood films. I think Million Dollar Baby is in a class by itself. It's the 10. This film is a very close second.