Teaching The Work Ethic

Rating: 9/10 (25 February 2009)

At the ripe old age of 78 Clint Eastwood is starting on a whole new career of playing tough old timers who are way past the day when they get the girl in their movies. Except as surrogate daughters which he's done in his past two films, four years apart though they be.
In Million Dollar Baby Eastwood plays the gruff very blue collar fight manager Frank Dunn who takes on female prize fighter Hilary Swank and she becomes a surrogate daughter to him. In Gran Torino the process is somewhat reversed, Eastwood is a recently widowed retired auto worker Walt Kowalski, still living in the family home in Detroit in a rapidly changing neighborhood. In fact that neighborhood's been changing for decades, the latest influx being Asians.
Despite his gruffness, his outright racism, Eastwood almost in spite of himself gets drawn into an Asian family of Hmong people and develops a father/children relationship with a brother and sister, Bee Vang and Ahney Her. He becomes closer to them than he is with his own children whom he feels have forgotten the American work ethic.
Actor Clint Eastwood a veteran of over 50 years in film and television is a man who knows himself and knows the limits and changes that age and infirmity have placed upon him. As his most famous screen character so aptly remarked a man has to know his limitations.
Director Clint Eastwood is nothing short of a genius in the performances he got from the two young Asian kids, both of whom were making their screen debuts and in fact from the rest of his Asian cast members, most of whom were new. Both the boy and the girl were just fabulous and so real as kids, not at all like Hollywood teen player types.
And both kids face some very typical choices that all youngsters face today, especially those growing up in areas at or below the poverty line. Especially the boy who's being pressured to join a gang. Clint himself is facing old age issues, but he still mentors the kids and in the end does what a man's got to do.
It took four years for actor Eastwood to reappear on the screen again. But it was worth the wait. With two back to back hits like Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino, I just hope I don't have to wait another four years for Clint to reappear.