Superb vehicle for Eastwood; one of the director's/actor's most memorable films of late

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2009)

GRAN TORINO (2008) ***1/2 Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley, Brian Haley, Geraldine Hughes, Dreama Walker, Brian Howe, John Carroll Lynch, William Hill, Brooke Chia Thao, Chee Thao, Choua Kue, Scott Eastwood, Xia Soua Chang, Sony Vue, Doua Moua, Austin Douglas Smith. Eastwood gives a memorably strong performance in reportedly one of his possible final on screen roles and it's a humdinger, as recently widower Walt Kowalski, a crusty, angry Korean War Vet and bigoted retiree whose twilight years are in for a surprise when he finds himself befriending his Hmong neighbors after one attempts to steal his titular vehicle for a gang initiation gone awry. The unlikely kinship between the flinty senior citizen and a family by proxy is only strained when the gang will not let up on his new friends and then things getwell, down right "dirty". Sure there are echoes of Eastwood's Harry Callahan as imagined if he lived to receive a pension but there is more to meet the eye in the simple yet sharply skewed screenplay by Nick Schenk and Dave Johannson, that Eastwood (who directs as well) turns in one of his more shrewdly layered turns in quite sometime: a fitting hallmark if in fact my boy decides to retire; don't count on it!