Gran Torino Alexa Jiménez

Rating: 8/10 (14 April 2012)

Title: Gran Torino will drive you wild.
By: Alexa Jimenez
This past week I have finished watching Gran Torino (2008), a movie produced, directed and featuring Clint Eastwood. In this movie, Clint Eastwood plays a cantankerous Korean War veteran that is haunted by his memories of war. As the story progresses, however, you can see how the main character transforms under the different circumstances he goes through.
Walter Kowalski is an old man who has just widowed and lives in Michigan holding prejudices and oblivious to the changes around the neighborhood and the world. He lives in a middle-low class neighborhood full with Hmong gangs that continually terrorize the area. When his neighbor, Thao, a young Hmong teenager, tries to steal his mint conditioned 1972 Gran Torino under pressure of one of the gangs as an initiation ritual, Walt sets out to save Thao's life. Absorbed into Thao's life, Walt soon finds himself protecting Thao and his family from these gangs.
As mentioned before, Clint Eastwood stars Walt Kowalski a grumpy old man. As in other occasions Clint Eastwood was first-class in his acting and showed the typical Clint Eastwood, who is tough and unbreakable in most of his movies. In this movie, he definitely played the character completely. However, Thao (Bee Vang) and his sister Sue (Annie Her) acted poorly and unnatural. They seemed to lack experience in their acting and the way they portrayed their characters. Father Janovich (Christopher Carley) was definitely decent in his acting and performed a good role throughout the movie.
The movie had a very interesting plot, which touched different topics such as racism, violence and segregation. I liked how Clint Eastwood acted and performed his character and how the setting was shown throughout the movie. It was very realistic. For example, when Sue is bullied for the first time the setting was very realistic and it absorbed the viewer into the setting that was portrayed at the moment of the movie. In this part she is walking with a friend and at a corner she finds a gang who start bullying her. The element that stands out the most in this scene is the metal fence, which is very symbolic. This fence not only represents a physical obstacle that does not permit something to pass or move on but also a social fence that does not permit the gangs to move on to a better life. However, the acting of Bee Vang and of Annie Her was disastrous and it was very unnatural, for example, in the scene where she goes up to Walt and tells him to go with her to her family's barbecue.
The theme of the story may as well be, don't judge a book by its cover. I believe this is the theme because there are a lot of prejudices present in the movie. To start with, Walt Kowalski is presented as a cantankerous character, which apparently hates everybody in his family and doesn't sympathize with a lot of people. However, as the story develops we notice that he is actually a good-natured man although he covers this under a shield of grumpiness because of past experiences at war. It is interesting to note that he is angry with himself throughout the movie and that is what makes him angry with everyone else. Another example of this is the racism that Walt has against the Hmong people. He actually tells a Hmong family at the beginning of the story to go back to their natal land. I believe almost every viewer could take these themes out of Gran Torino.
I would recommend this movie to people who like drama, action, violence and social awareness. It has a good combination of these elements. I would not recommend this movie to people who are sensible to blood or find foul language offensive. I'd say this movie is for ages 13 and up, and I would personally rate it a PG-13 and not R as it was given. My final word for this movie is that it was a good movie that kept viewers interested at all times and proposed different topics throughout it that are not always seen or attacked. I would rate it an 8.4 out of 10. As the genre the movie belongs to it would be Drama as well as Action. It involves the clash between a "good" side and a "bad" side and involves fighting and tension between the characters but it also includes the drama of Mr.Kowalski's personal life as well as Thao's personal life too.
My name is Alexa Jimenez. I currently live in San Jose, Costa Rica and I am a junior at Lincoln School. I like to do Yoga, read thought provoking books and watch movies.