Walt knows more about death than living

 GRAN TORINO (2008)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I've met hard-bitten, angry, bitter men like Walt before. I have heard racial epithets used during my pre-teen past but not necessarily by Korean War veterans but other men who felt the need to express their views or "tell it like it is." Maybe I never paid a whole lot of attention and kind of laughed it off, like some of the Hmong teens do as depicted in "Gran Torino." Walt is just one of those crazy old American guys who doesn't like the direction America went in, hates Japanese cars (hell, he's a former Ford auto worker) and just wants everyone off his lawn. He doesn't care who is on his lawn, or whether the skin color is not white - nobody better step near his lawn.

Clint Eastwood is the angry, embittered Walt Kowalski who has just lost his wife. His estranged offspring are grown up and drive those Japanese cars that he hates so much. Walt lives alone and wants to be left alone. An eager young twenty-something priest, Father Janovich (Christopher Carley), wants to help him per Walt's wife's last wishes but Walt wants none of that. He can't stand anyone or anything, hates his Hmong neighbors whom he wished just stayed where they came from and, in one terrifyingly funny scene, clearly boils with pure anger when his son insists he move into a nursing home! Oh, the gall! 

Walt lives next door to Thao (Bee Vang), a virtually silent young Hmong kid whom Walt slowly brings out of his shell. Thao is harassed and practically forced into joining a Hmong gang and when the gang try to coerce him (after a failed initiation run), Walt approaches with his rifle and yells "Get off my lawn!" The iconic line has entered pop culture ever since yet this is not Eastwood in a Dirty Harry phase, this is a curmudgeonly 78-year-old man who has no qualms about shooting someone in the face. After this seemingly "heroic" incident, Walt is showered with gifts and prepared meals from the community. He wants nothing of it yet feels the need to teach Thao how to be a man, apply for a construction job, collect tools and fix things. If Thao is lucky, he just might get a sweet ride out of Walt's 1972 Gran Torino parked outside the garage.

"Gran Torino" unfolds with sublime elegance and shows Eastwood is still as confident a storyteller as he is an actor. Speaking of acting, in actuality, this is the first truly hypnotic performance by Eastwood I've seen in quite some time. His ailing, bigoted Walt is a far cry from anything Eastwood has ever played and he disappears into the role (especially during confrontations with Hmong gang members or black gang members harassing Thao's sister). There is something genuinely off about this man only because he had lost so much and is uncertain of his future or if he has any. When he talks to Father Janovich about life and death, the fatalities of war and following orders, Walt sees a deeper, more haunting reality: the moment when a man does something he isn't ordered to do.

"Gran Torino" is packed with a lot of heat and a certain kind of boiling anger (this Walt is not the same trigger happy bigot Peter Boyle played in "Joe"), not to mention isolating the cultural differences between what is said and unsaid between an American like Walt and the Hmong people (some from the Hmong community, including Bee Vang, have since criticized the film for inaccuracies and exploiting racial slurs). Though the film could've have benefitted from a more stringent outlining of the Hmong people (though Ahney Her as Thao's older sister is terrifically funny in her scenes with Eastwood), the film nevertheless stays truthful to Walt who may or may not be seeking redemption and there is an unexpected self-sacrifice. A powerful, moody character portrait of sadness and, yes, indeed, self-sacrifice.