Eastwood's swan song

Rating: 9/10 (21 June 2009)

Clint Eastwood's acting and career can be summed up in the fact that he was a tremendous presence both in front of and behind the camera. Walt Kowalski is a role tailor made for this American icon. It's a role we've come to love Clint for playing and yet it has more depth than we come to expect.
Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, an aging Korean War vet living in a neighborhood that doesn't belong to his ethnic background anymore. Kowalski is a racist, not because he truly has anything wrong with other races but because he hates himself. His beloved wife Dorothy has passed on, leaving him to contemplate his mortality on his porch with Daisy his Labrador Retriever. His neighbors are a part of the Hmoung population. He comes to befriend Thao and Sue his next door neighbors who are trying to grow up on the wrong side of the tracks. Despite his best efforts he becomes a father figure to them willing to sacrifice everything for the people he has come the closest to in his lonely life.
Putting it bluntly, the audience wants Harry Callihan. Kowalski is Callihan incarnate and yet he is a deeper and more satisfying character. I for one admire Eastwood for retiring the Callihan character and yet giving the audience what they want. Kowalski is a geriatric racist but he is as much fun and has as much spunk as Callihan did in 1971. What Eastwood is doing is quite brilliant, he is both paying homage to the Callihan breed of character and yet giving it a dissection as well. Behind the gun and the grimace lies a deep pain. Eastwood isn't a superhero and isn't trying to be one at his age. The idea of the superhero and the action hero isn't appealing when you are dealing with a 78 year old man. Kowalski is a tragic character who realizes that his life is a complete void. His gruff exterior hides a deep inner pain. It should be noted that Kowalski does not fire a weapon once in the entire film and yet the publicity posters and trailers make this out to be an action film. I wonder if Kowalski would be pushed to firing a weapon. This makes the ending of the film all the more satisfying. The ending is truly one of the most brilliant scenes Eastwood has ever filmed.
Eastwood is playing a vulnerable man and we don't expect this from him. Eastwood himself is larger than life and to see him take on the role of Walt Kowalski and deliver despite it being a very similar character is really special.