The last of the Great American Actors

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2009)

I love going to the movies, and I sometimes overate movies, just because I had so much fun seeing the movie, but that is not the case this time around.
Gran Torino is just a great movie. Clint Eastwood Delivers...Again as A Director, a Producer, and especially as an actor. The movie is just very...very well done. It was shot in 76 days, and I wouldn't change anything about it for the world.
The story is very basic. Walt Kowalski, a racist, Korean Veteran's wife has just died. He lives in a neighborhood populated by the Huang people from South Eastern Asia. He hates Asians from his Korean War days, so he despises all his neighbors. His children hate him, and just want him to die, so they can get his prize possession, his Gran Torino car. One night a gang pressures Kowalski's Asian next door neighbor, into trying to steal the Gran Torino. Kowalski gets really mad at the kid, but the gang tries to threaten his neighbors, and Kowalski saves them. The neighborhood thinks of Kowalski as a hero, and he begins to develop a relationship with his next door neighbors, which culminates into a very beautiful climax.
The movie has excellent cinematography, and it is just a very conventional movie, everything is by the books. Eastwood is a masterful director who manages to create this gritty yet laid back feeling at the same time. The movie is very emotional, but at times, it can be extremely funny.
Clint Eastwood gives the best performance of 2008 bar none. Better than Will Smith in Seven Pounds. Better than Ed Norton in Pride and Glory. Better than Sean Penn in Milk. Better than Frank Langella in Frost Nixon. Eastwood just portrays this bigoted, racist, hardcore, old school, Korean war veteran, widower in such a masterful way, that you really believe in your head that you've met a thousand of these kind of people, but somehow Eastwood's character separates himself from the others. Eastwood manages to be serious, yet very funny at the same time. One thing that I noticed in the movie is that only two sequences in the entire movie have music. The rest of the movie is just Eastwood's incredible performance keeping you glued to the screen. If there was ever an actor who deserved the Best Actor Academy Award...then it's Clint Eastwood. He's 78 years old, and regardless of his past performances, he has given us the best Performance of any actor for 2008.
This is one of those movies that 10...20 years from now when you see the movie being played on TV you'll go...That was an amazing movie. It's just one of those movies that you don't see any more. You can't miss this movie...Eastwood's best.