Clint's baaack

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2009)

This is first and foremost a comedy - Archie Bunker style. It also has the Clint Eastwood showdown and scenes of good vs. evil plus his subtle manhood lessons to his shy Hmong neighbor teenager boy. Set in current Detroit in a run down blue collar neighborhood that is evolving into an Asian lair Walt Kowalski (Clint) is the recently widowed and crusty, embittered holdout retired from fifty years at Ford. Hmongs are the mountain people chased out of Vietnam for having chosen our side and their cultural episodes with Walt invited reluctantly are hilarious. Eastwood took up Michigan on their movie location subsidy and over thirty local Southeast Asians were hired on site or were trained in Michigan so it is also an economic stimulant. The music arrangements were done by Clint's son Kyle and Clint himself sings the background song at the end. If you are sensitive to Archie Bunker type of bigotry, and it abounds from Walt, you should stay away but even this crotchety Korean War veteran mellows before your eye. I thought I had seen the barber and the daughter in law in commercials or somewhere - you have a look-see. This brought me back to the big screen after two months of Netflix and it was worth the trip. Enjoy/jack/