Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/10/09
What
an amazing career Clint Eastwood has had, from 50's TV star to 60's Western
icon to 70's and 80's action hero and 90's and 00's auteur, taking a little
time out in between for mayoring and co-owning the Pebble Beach country
club. 10 Oscar nominations, all since the age of 62, and as an actor,
the 78-year-old icon is only just hitting his stride. As such, it
would be both unfortunate and appropriate if, as he's threatened, Gran
Torino should prove to be his swan song in front of the camera.
Unfortunate because his work here and in Million Dollar Baby is
his best ever, but appropriate since Torino would be an amazing
capper on a legendary career. Just as Unforgiven offered a
final word on the violent legacy of the Western Myth, Gran Torino
ponders the place of the macho old school man of action in a changing world,
the things he has to teach it, and the things it has to teach him.
Walt
Kowalski (Eastwood) mourns the passing of his wife at a funeral that only
serves to underscore how estranged he is from his two grown sons (Brian
Haley and Brian Howe) and the Priest (Christopher Carley) who promised
the late Mrs. Kowalski he'd look after him. Walt's worn the scars
of his Korean War service for over 50 years, and he's ready to simply coast
through the rest of his days embittered and alone with only his dog for
company. While he was content to remain in the house where he's lived
for decades, his old neighbors have moved on and the neighborhood has become
heavily ethnic, something that doesn't sit well with the bigoted Walt.
His neighbors are the Lors, an oriental family of Hmong ancestry.
As daughter Sue (Ahney Her) says, in this neighborhood, the girls go to
college and the boys go to jail, and son Thao (Been Vang) is trying desperately
to keep a profile so low it will keep him out of the local gang.
But he succumbs to the pressure to attempt an initiation crime, the theft
of Walt's beloved '72 Ford Gran Torino. It doesn't work, because
the Veteran's always got a gun at hand and nothing better to do than keep
an eye on his perimeter. For the same reason, he intervenes when
gangsters led by Spider (Doua Moua) try to drag the kid away for his failure
and end up on the Kowalski lawn. Pulling a shotgun on the gang makes
Walt a neighborhood hero, and in spite of himself he keeps growing closer
and closer to both Lor kids, becoming a father figure to the shiftless
Thao. But is there any way one old man with a gun can stop an entire
gang?
From
Unforgiven forward, Eastwood the director has been tackling darker
and more serious subject matter, so it comes as something of a surprise
to find that Gran Torino is a real crowd-pleaser, funny and filled
with likable characters. Getting to know the Lors and some of the
other neighborhood Hmongs allows the biggoted Walt to see them as individuals,
some good and some bad. I liked that the movie doesn't shy away from
the fact that the disapproval an elderly guy like him would show toward
some aspects of today's youth culture is not all unearned, and the film
stays entirely within itself, never attempting show-stopping speeches about
tolerance. It simply observes a series of relationships that begin
when a sad old widower has nothing better to do than sit out on his porch
and actually get to know his neighbors.
Beaten
down by his circumstances, Thao has a lot to learn about “being a man”,
and Walt, who failed so miserably to raise two ingrate sons (who in turn
have pretty awful families of their own), is happy to step in. A
scene where he takes him to his barber (a delightful John Carroll Lynch)
to learn how “real men” talk is a joy, matched by another where Thao uses
that newfound skill to charm a friend of Walt's (William Hill). Nick
Schenk's screenplay (he shares story credit with Dave Johannson) nicely
sidesteps cliches about ethnic sainthood and bitter old men, showing us
instead how Walt's worldview was shaped by horrible years in another part
of the world murdering “different” people during the Korean War.
About
that War... fans of Eastwood's action catalog will be pretty happy to see
him kick butt once again: even as he closes in on 80, the man is
ferociously intimidating. But Torino makes a great bookend
to Unforgiven as it considers the way we turn to violence to solve
our problems from a different angle. Not that it has any answers:
Walt's solution to the neighborhood's problem (observant viewers will know
the inevitable path we're on just a few seconds into the film) is by no
means universal, and not something I recommend anyone try at home.
But unlike his Oscar-winning Western, which stood back and watched as cycles
of violence spun madly out of control and its' hero found himself unable
to break the curse of his lethal skills, Gran Torino contemplates
how things like forgiveness and human connection can help to lift the weight
violence places upon us both as individuals and as a society.
For
most people, the headline here will be Eastwood the star, presenting a
summation of his career: by turns flawed, funny, mean, violent, righteous
and charming. It's hard to imagine a note anyone ever enjoyed watching
him play that's not just here, but better than ever before. Walt's a character
the movie's rarely allow to be their focal point, a simple elderly guy
of few words and serious convictions. In some ways, Gran Torino
allows us to see what most coming of age stories would look like if you
took that scene-stealing grandparent and made them the star. It's
a tour-de-force, and suggests that the star's tank has never been more
full.
We
all know he's an actor's director when surrounded by stars, but here he
gets great work out of a cast of newcomers and unknowns. Father Janovich
is an awesome movie Priest, working as hard as he can to make the world
a better place, but never taking his eyes off the one that actually exists.
Carley does a great job of providing fresh-faced innocence and optimism
to balance Walt's world-weary bitterness, and then letting that worldview
be tested by the violence and injustice around him. Vang and Her
are both making their film debuts and both are exceptional, finding the
real people inside roles that could easily have slipped into cliche.
In smaller roles, the Kowalski sons are scene-stealingly odious, and Haley
and Howe are joined in their fine work by Geraldine Hughes and Dreama Walker
as Haley's rotten wife and daughter respectively.
As
I've mentioned, Gran Torino feels like a career-capper for its'
iconic star, who emerged in the 60's as a symbol of an emerging fear and
rage that maybe good wouldn't always win in the end and that maybe the
heroes had to be a little bad too to keep up. Today we understand
a little better how fighting evil with evil has a way of fanning the flames,
even if we still don't know just how we should be fighting it instead.
In the end, Walt Kowalski can only solve one problem, but maybe the larger
answer lies in the reason he felt like it was his problem at all. |
