Dirty Harry......Minus The Violence

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2009)

******Possible Spoilers*****
"Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have f***ed with? That's me."
Clint Eastwood is back and better than ever in his small masterpiece "Gran Torino". Eastwood is remarkable as Walt Kowalski, an old man who's wife has just passed. He's a hardened war vet who'll give anybody the cold shoulder(especially his family). Walt is the last of a dying breed, living in the Hmong ghetto. The world isn't the way that he once knew; teenagers show disrespect to their elders and parents want to get rid of their elderly parents. It's a vicious cycle that Walt wants no part of.
Early on in the movie, a Hmong family moves next door to Walt. Of course, Walt does not bake them a cake and take it over to them like a good neighbor. Instead, Walt pays no attention to them as he mumbles racial slurs. Now, up to this point in the film, Eastwood is playing a rigid,bitter,and cold hearted old man who's just waiting for his time to run out. However, this all changes when Walt decides to protect his neighbors from a gang. "Get off my lawn", Walt snarls, pointing a rifle at their heads.
The next day, the Hmong neighbors start to ravish Walt with gifts. Walt kindly declines buy taking the gifts and throwing them in the trash while the neighbors are watching. Did I mention that Walt is an a$$hole?
Eventually, Walt begins to warm up to his Asian neighbors by accepting to go to their cookout. Then, Walt starts to bond with the Hmong boy,Thao, who he saved from the gang. Here's where the beauty of the movie comes into play. Walt realizes that the Hmong people, that he has verbally abused for more than fifty years, are more like his family than his own flesh and blood.
Eastwood has always been an amazing actor; whether he was a tough as nails cop as Dirty Harry Callahan or an elderly gunslinger as William Munny, Eastwood is always on top of his game. The character of Walt Kowalski is portrayed flawlessly. It is one of the very few movies that actually makes me forget that these are actors "playing" their character, instead of actors "becoming" their character.
This movie is,to put it simply, stunning. Some critics will argue that the movie becomes slow and boring at times, but this is not a movie about blowing s**t up; this is a movie about how we interact with people and judge others with our preconceived notions. I finished this film and felt as though my entire world had been rocked. Everything was better than I expected it to be. "Gran Torino" is easily one of the best pictures of the year, and also one of Eastwood's best performances of all time. 9.5 out of 10