Walt Kowalski : I may not be the most pleasant person to be around

Rating: 9/10 (19 January 2009)

If the rumors are true and Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino is Clint Eastwood's last acting role, then Eastwood  the director has staged and performed his grand exit gloriously. Gran Torino has been called not the perfect movie and blamed on handling some very controversial subjects rather heavily. I may agree with these statements but perfect or not, Gran Torino is a fantastic poignant movie with the storytelling at its best, the characters we got to know, to understand, and to care about, their interaction that seem real, and the ending that moved me to no end. I won't say better about my admiration with Eastwood than Roger Ebert did: "What other figure in the history of the cinema has been an actor for 53 years, a director for 37, won two Oscars for direction, two more for best picture, plus the Thalberg Award, and at 78 can direct himself in his own film and look meaner than hell? None, that's how many." How many actors can play a character who is in the beginning truly unlikable, hating, angry old racist but during the course of two hours he would turn to you with such different facets that it would break your heart, move you deeply, make you want to have old Walt as your friend, and make you think that Walt's late wife, the only love of his life was a lucky lady? Eastwood pulled it admirably, and I can't think of any other Artist who could.
Many viewers and reviewers talk about Eastwood's returning to his most known and admired cult role of Insp. 'Dirty' Harry Callahan', and it is true, but the film is about many many things - about sad loneliness of aging, for once. It is about how hostility, mistrust and contempt for people of different from you language, way of life, traditions, culture, and background can be slowly but gradually replaced by interest, mutual respect, and understanding. It is also about the loss or not even ever having connection with your own family and not finding the way to re-connect. The film shows that it is never too late to change something in yourself, to become better - no matter how long you have to live. The last theme brought to my mind the film made 57 years ago by great Akira Kurosawa, "Ikiru" - "To Live". Very different, both films have in common the theme of inevitability of the end of a life and what can be done if the end is close?
And what about Gran Torino? It is the rare collector's car of 1972 which sits in Walt Kowalski's (Eastwood) garage. Walt, who had worked 50 years at the Ford's factory in Detroit, Michigan, participated in its assembly and bought it in the same year. Gran Torino was the reason he got to know and involved in the lives of his next door neighbors even though he never planned or expected for that to happen.