Gran Torino is an interesting and enjoyable action, drama, thriller (with a comic edge) directed and starring Clint Eastwood.
Gran Torino trailer at bottom of post
The notion of a 78-year-old action hero may sound like a contradiction in terms, but Eastwood brings it off, even if his toughness is as much verbal as physical. Even at 78, Eastwood can make "Get off my lawn" sound as menacing as "Make my day."
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley, John Carroll Lynch
Director: Clint Eastwood
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating: R for language throughout, and some violence
Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes
MacGuffin
The 1972 Gran Torino, for which this movie is named, is a MacGuffin (a plot device) that motivates the characters and advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise. In this case the car brings together a crank newly widowed man named with a fatherless Hmoung (from the country of Loas) boy Tao ,played by Bee Vang, who, in an initiation to a gang tries to steal it. (Ahney Her to play Tao’s older sister, Sue.)
When we first find out about the car it is from a disrespecting granddaughter played by Geraldine Hughes, who suggest that he should leave the car to her and give her one of his sofas for her dorm room. Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) doesn't dignify the girl with an answer, just spits and walks away from her. (In general woman do not fare well in this film, it's definitely a more male film.)
When the boy is caught attempting to steal the car, we get to see the familiar Clint Eastwood with a gun. And though he had time to shoot, he hesitates and then slips and the boy, whom he knows is the neighbor, escapes, not to be pursued.
1972
In 1972 Clint Eastwood directed and starred in a memorable Western called "High Plains Drifter." In that movie Eastwood plays a gunfighting stranger who comes to a small town and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.
In Gran Torino, Eastwood, though a long time local, has become a stranger to the heavily Asian neighborhood. The Asian's remind him about his fighting in Korea while in the military, and about fellow soldiers that were lost. Mind you that these Asians in his neighborhood are Hmong from Loas, a mountainous people who fought with the US during the Viet Nam war, and after the US pulled out were abandoned. Most who did not flee were murdered by the Communist, some were brought to the US at the sponsorship of different Church groups. (I as a teen actually taught Hmoung English as a second language in Chicago.) So Hmoung are not the enemy.
The enemy though turns out to be a group of gangbangers, from whom the neighbors find need of being rescued from. At this point we get a classic Eastwood line : "Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have messed with? That's me"
There are several interesting similarities between the two movies, in High Plains Drifter, the Stranger's dark side is revealed by how he treats woman (raping one fairly early on). In Gran Turo it's the constant racial slurs and general angry demeanor that sets up his dark side.
The end of "High Plains Drifter" has a slight supernatural effect, that might be argued to counterpoint the ending of Gran Torino - but I cant spell it out without possibly spoiling both movies.
Masculinity:
Early in the movie, and not really by his initial choice Walt Kowalski sets out to reform his neighbor, the young Hmong teenager. He sets about making the fatherless boy more of a man.
Eastwood promotes this idea of male identities to the self-meaning that are embedded in the masculine role, such as doing masculine type work, rather than the seemingly feminine gardening that the boy enjoys.
In The Perils of Masculinity Andreas G. Philaretou writes:..the greater the identification with the idealized masculine identity, the more motivated the individual will be to perform and excel in masculine -role related behavior." And this is what happens, not just for the boy, but also for a young priest.
Eastwood, through his portrayal of Walt Kowalski, demonstrates to them the:"Ethos of Masculinity", where socialized men are to be tough and to avoid any kind of public or interpersonal display of emotional pain or upset.
Morality
In his famous Dirty Harry movies where he was criticized by some for his portrayal of a rouge cop who exercises brutality against presumed guilty- he defended the character saying Harry was a before his time champion of victims rights, and characterized Harry as attending to a higher morality.
In an interview in the magazine Positif (March 1994) he said: Dirty Harry provided simple solutions to horribly complicated problem.
As Kenneth Toran wrote in the Los Angeles Times about this movie: "Gran Torino" will start to feel familiar and create concern that this is all there is to the film. It is familiar, but only to a point. Suddenly, that point is past and much more serious questions come up, questions of responsibility, of vengeance, of the efficacy of blood for blood.
Other notes:
Walt Kowalski: His last name may or may not be a reference to the Dodge Challenger-driving counterculture hero, played by Barry Newman, of Richard C. Sarafian's cult classic "Vanishing Point," although the two characters have little in common other than, perhaps, their fondness for a nice set of wheels
Clint Eastwood
">Clint EastwoodHas acted in 66 movies and as of now has directed 33.
Born on May 31, 1930.
when he was a teenager he attended a Jazz at the Philharmonic and heard Charlie Parker for the first time and began playing jazz piano informally at the Omar Club in Oakland, In 1987 after extensive research and acquiring original music material he makes the film biopic `Bird" about Charlie Parker.
Eastwood wrote an original song for Gran Torino, as he has done for other of his movies. The song he wrote fro Gran Torino is up for a Golden Globe.
Eastwood has worked worked as a lifeguard, a lumberjack, fought forest fires and tended a blast furnace for Bethlehem Steel. In 1951 he applied to Seattle University where he planned to major in music. Instead he got drafted.
Returning from a furlough in Seattle, he was nearly lost at sea when the two man plane he hitched a ride nwith went down. He had to swim three miles back to shore.
Discharged from the army he meets and marries Maggie Johnson (1953)
He attends Los Angeles City Collage on on the GI Bill. He begins taking drama lessons.
At the Golden Globes in 1988 he won the Cecil B. DeMilles Lifetime achievement award.
In an interview he said: I try to concentrate on the story, because it is there that it is all tied up..Then I try to see how the images can best agree with the story, what form I want the story to appear in, what sonorities.(Jousse and Nevrs 1992)
On the role of the audience: "They must participate in every shot, in everything, I give them what I think is necessary to know, to progress through the story, but I don't lay out so much that it insults their intelligence,I Try to give a certain amount to their imagination. (Thompson and Hunter interview in 1977).
References:
Collier. R. (1995). Masculinity, law, and the family. London: Routledge.
The Perils of Masculinity: An Analysis of Male Sexual Anxiety, Sexual Addiction, and Relational Abuse
By Andreas G. Philaretou
Published by University Press of America, 2004
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-torino12-2008dec12,0,1818950.story
MOVIE REVIEW
'Gran Torino'
Clint Eastwood, at 78, shows he's still a formidable action figure.
By Kenneth Turan MOVIE CRITIC
