It's the deeds that count

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 2009)

This movie is a one man project: Clint Eastwood, 78 years, main actor, director and creative brain behind this movie. It seems as if this movie is his final work and his last one - maybe not as a director but as an actor in his own movie.
Hasn't he always been Walt Kowalsky? When he was younger he was Dirty Harry and later on Frankie Dunn, his character in Million Dollar Baby. In fact, these two movies are particularly similar because the characters are almost identical: They both dislike church, think badly of family and get attached to a stranger who becomes like a son / daughter to them. They have a soft spot under a tough shell.
Many viewers have written that Walt's character changes throughout the film. I don't think so. I think people never really change and Walt doesn't either. In the beginning we don't know him so we judge him by his outside- his looks and his behavior: We don't like him. Throughout the movie we get to know Walt and in the end we even love him. We are the ones that change our opinion about Walt.
Gran Torino goes deliberately against all trends of today's world: Walt is an grumpy old men, impolite and primitive, he has bad manners and is absolutely politically incorrect. All these attributes make him a very irritating opposite of the so called ideals of today's public world: fashionable good looks, sweet talk, slick appearances and phony political correctness.
Walt (and Clint) doesn't like the direction today's world has taken. Its society is phony, weak and superficial.Talk is cheap. Nobody seems to deliver. He is ready for real sacrifices in order to make the world a better place? Are we?
It's such a simple story (some say it's too simple) but stuffed with so many important issues! Once you start thinking you realize the movie has covered them all - mainly through Walt's character: sacrifice and death (redemption), real values (they don't make them as they used to"), religion, family (relation by choice"), the future vision of society (not the white race..).
In its own way it's a kind of a feel good movie even if there is nothing much pleasant at first sight. The message of the movie, though bitter, gives us hope and makes us feel right, because its heroic role model character teaches us the real values of life and makes a lasting impression.
A movie must see for everyone!