Susan Granger’s review of “Gran Torino” (Warner Bros)
Who would have thought that Dirty Harry would become not only one of Hollywood’s most respected filmmakers but also one of its most compassionate humanists? Eastwood has been nominated for best director and picture four times. The two occasions he won those awards, he starred in the film; the two times he didn’t, he didn’t. Like “Million Dollar Baby,” “Gran Torino” is about a cynical old-timer who befriends a younger person with a troubled background. Retired autoworker/Korean war vet Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a scowling, surly bigot who comes to terms with his abusive racism through his relationship with a Hmong teenager harassed by hoodlums. As the story begins in a deteriorating, blue-collar Detroit neighborhood, cantankerous Walt is a recent widower. Disgusted with the behavior of his callow sons and their self-centered, disrespectful children at his beloved wife’s funeral, he just wants to be left alone – to drink beer in the company of his dog Daisy. But when Walt catches 16 year-old Thao (Bee Vang), who’s been goaded by gang members, trying to steal his precious, mint-condition 1972 Gran Torino, Thao’s traditional Hmong family, immigrants from Laos, is humiliated. They insist that Thao pay penance by working for Walt, which leads to a gradually growing friendship that’s nurtured by Thao’s spunky older sister Sue (Ahney Her). “I have more in common with these gooks than with my own spoiled, rotten family,” Walt grudgingly admits. So when the Hmong family is threatened, Walt takes action. Working from Nick Schenk’s character-driven, culture-colliding tragicomedy, Eastwood crafts believable people facing an untenable dilemma, tinged with ethnic, racial and religious tension. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Gran Torino” is a timely, confrontational 9. At age 78, Eastwood still commands the screen.