Eh,,, It was alright.. well.. kinda

Rating: 5/10 (17 March 2009)

OK. After the passing away of his wife, an Korean veteran is left alone in a neighborhood with almost only immigrants and a lot of criminality. He has little contact with his family, perhaps because he is such an ass, or because they keep undermining his pride with their care, whichever, the interaction between them is quite amusing. To be sure, most of the humor in this film steems from the veterans bad temper.
Through a twist of fate he gets some contact with his neighbors, an Asian family, whose hopeless son are bullied my the local thugs. Relucantly this old veteran starts socialize with this family and much to his amazement find them to be decent people.
While like some of Clint Eastwoods older films, i gotta say, I've probably grown tired of seeing him play the sullen thoughghuy. Its like watching Bill Murray turn in another performance as bored and sarcastic. You forget whoever he is playing and just see the actor.. Eastwood certainly knows his sticthc, but i wouldn't say this ranks among his better performances. Its a little overdone with the grunting and all. Still i had bigger issues with some of the other actors here, the Asian wimp especially, sometimes i just couldn't figure out if he truly was shy or really afraid of the camera.
All in all, the story plays out like you would imagine, but has a pretty neat touch just at the end. So its good, but not memorable. But most people like a hero*, i suppose, especially the tragic* ones, and Clint Eastwood sure loves to play em.
* Some would assert that this guy isn't a hero, because swears a lot and even is a racist, so he is a anti-hero, but i would assert that anti-hero's are our modern cinemas conventional heroes. More importantlym this also makes him more tragic(misunderstood) when he finally does something good (sacrificing himself).
EDIT: after some consideration decided to lower its grade, its just plays out to much as a vehicle for Eastwoods ego.