A Fine End to a Fine Career

Rating: 9/10 (27 March 2009)

There is not enough space in this review to do justice to complexity of "Gran Torino", which deals with a number of closely interlinked themes- the relationship between different races, the relationship between different generations, immigration, national identity, cultural alienation, religion, old age, the decline of traditional American industries and of traditional working-class neighbourhoods, gang culture, violence and war.
Unusually for a Hollywood film, this one is set in a blue-collar community, in this case Highland Park, a suburb of Detroit. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired Ford automobile assembly line worker and Korean War veteran. Walt has lived in Highland Park all his life, but he is now one of the few remaining white inhabitants of the area. Most of his immediate neighbours are Hmong, members of an ethnic group from South-East Asia. At the start of the movie, Walt's wife Dorothy has recently died, and he feels estranged from his two sons and their families. His relationships with his Hmong neighbours are, initially, difficult, but a turning point comes when he catches a teenage Hmong boy, Thao trying to steal his prized possession, a 1972 Gran Torino Sport. It turns out that Thao was ordered to steal the car as an initiation into a gang led by his older cousin, and that he is basically a decent young man who has got into the wrong company. The rest of the film deals with the growing friendship between Walt and Thao and his family, and Walt's campaign to rid the neighbourhood of the influence of the gang, who have been terrorising the Hmong community.
Although Walt is the film's central character, and in a sense its hero, Eastwood is careful not to idealise him. At the beginning he seems like a sort of American Alf Garnett- prickly, cantankerous and bigoted, normally referring to his Asian neighbours as "gooks" or "chinks". He can see little good in the younger generation, including his own children and grandchildren, whom he regards (with some justification) as selfish and lacking in respect. He has something of the Dirty Harry about him, especially in his attitude to law and order. Yet it would be wrong to see Walt simply as a bad-tempered old git. If he has the social attitudes of a Dirty Harry, he also has Harry's physical courage, shown when he rescues Thao's sister Sue when she is being threatened by gangsters.
Although he may seem arrogant and self-confident, beneath his façade he is in many ways a troubled man. He knows that he is suffering from lung cancer and has not long to live. He is still haunted by guilt over the role he played in the Korean War, and the killings he witnessed in that conflict have caused him to lose his religious faith, even though Dorothy was a devout Catholic. He is particularly irritated by the local parish priest, Father Janovich, whom he sees as a shallow, over-educated young man who knows nothing about real life. The film can be seen as the story of how Walt's redemption, of how he finds the better side of his nature.
The film is not just a character study of Walt, but can also be seen as a study of an immigrant community. Although there is initially a good deal of mistrust on both sides, there is a gradual rapprochement between Walt and the Hmong community, which may be due to the fact that he and they are in a similar situation. He feels alienated from the society in which he grew up because of the social changes which have occurred in his neighbourhood. They are alienated from their homeland, having been forced to leave it for political reasons and to settle in a part of the world which is about as different as it is possible to be. In the tropics of South-East Asia they were hill farmers; in America they live in an urban, industrial, largely flat part of the Mid-West with bitterly cold winters, surrounded by people from a very different cultural background. The older Hmong try to hold fast to their traditional culture, whereas many of the younger members of the community try to copy American youth culture, particularly the gang culture of their black and Hispanic neighbours, wearing the same fashions and listening to the same rap music.
Given the age of the star, there is a surprising amount of physical action involved, but then Walt, the 78-year-old action hero, is probably a role which only Clint Eastwood could have played. This is not only one of his best acting performances but also one of his most memorable creations, to stand alongside Dirty Harry and the Man with No Name. Eastwood has said that this will be his last film as an actor, although he will continue to produce and direct. If so, he has chosen a fine vehicle with which to end his acting career. 9/10