Gentle now, the tender breeze, blows whispers thru my Gran Torino.

Rating: 9/10 (14 July 2009)

Walt Kowalski, recently widowed and a Korean War Veteran, refuses to let go of his prejudices and embrace the ever changing world he exists in. Irked and distant from his shallow family, Walt now only cares for his dog and his beautiful mint condition 1972 Gran Torino. When young Hmong teenager Thao from next door is caught trying to steal the car, Walt could have no idea it was going to shape his, and his neighbours respective destinies.
When it was first announced that Clint Eastwood was to direct and star in Gran Torino, many insiders worried that Eastwood may be about to embarrass himself as some aged Dirty Harry clone. They needn't have worried, and in fact should have afforded the intelligent icon the benefit of any smouldering doubt, because if this is to be, as expected, Eastwood's final performance in front of the camera, it's a truly marvellous bow out from a very special man.
Gran Torino, I think it's fair to say is a very personal picture to Eastwood, scratch away at the skin of it and you can see that he must have waited for some time to find the right picture to finish with, Gran Torino is the right picture for him, it's also the right picture for his fans to embrace as the closing down of a career, a career that most of us have grown up with. Perfectly etched and grizzled, Walt Kowalski embodies all of Eastwood's main cinematic characters, it feels {is} as tho we have all come full circle, the ending of Torino functioning as a beautiful and emotional release of so so many things.
Substance wise, Gran Torino is a shrewd look at violence, vengeance and pedal stool heroics, with Eastwood and his writers {Nick Schenk/Dave Johannson} cunningly crafting a sensitively tough film that's also engagingly funny, it's quite a trick to mold so many factors and make it work in such an earnest way. Eastwood is immense, in every scene he is a towering presence, a beacon of grumpy magnetism, and as the story veers towards its inevitable search for emotional salvation, Eastwood emotes with the best of them, even with few words he spell binds in his wrinkly vein protruding frame.
Sadly the Asian actors around him are very poor, very much so, and the inevitability factor is hard to ignore, so yes, Gran Torino has flaws. So it's possibly not given some critics the swan song they wanted {he would of had to have retired after Unforgiven for a perfect swan song you feel}, but it stands proud as a great Eastwood film because of the man himself. As the end credits role, Eastwood raspingly recites the title song, this gives way to Jaimie Cullum's soft and beautiful rendition of the same song, Eastwood you feel has given way to the younger generation. But few actors of his generation will be as remembered as fondly as he is, he owes none of us cinema fans anything, and in Gran Torino he has thanked us the fans whilst simultaneously closing down a fabulous career, thank you big fella. 9/10