Published: December 24, 2008 11:38 am      

Eastwood's "Gran Torino" is one of year's best

Give this movie a test drive. In my opinion, it’s the best of the lot so far this year, despite what my collegues in the DFW film Critics Association said.

The movie is a typical Clint Eastwood tough guy movie. It’s sort of like Dirty Harry on a pension — with his same attitude and tough guy demeanor and prejudices.

The difference is Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) actually grows in this movie. This movie has a heart. Personally I like it better than either Million Dollar Baby (2004) or The Changeling (2008) also directed by Eastwood.

Eastwood also composed the music in this one and voiced — I hesitate to use the word sung — the lyrics over the closing credits.

This movie also shows that you don’t have to be related by blood to be family and care about either an old curmudgeon or a Hmong juvenile delinquent in the making.

The story is compelling and, mixed with drama and humor. The major problem I found with the movie was the ending presupposed that people — expecially Vietnamese — would speak out against their own kind when there were so many examples of what happened when you went against these gang members.

In spite of that, I still think this is a superior movie.

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley, Doua Moua, Geraldine Hughes, Brian Haley, John Carroll Lynch, Brian Howe, Chee Thao

Gran Turino

Rating (**** 1/2 out of *****)

Synopsis: (Courtesy of Warner Bros.) Multiple Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood stars in the drama “Gran Torino,” marking his first film role since his Oscar-winning film “Million Dollar Baby.” Eastwood stars as an iron-willed and inflexible Korean War veteran, living in a changing world, who is forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own long-held prejudices.

Retired auto worker Walt Kowalski fills his days with home repair, beer, and monthly trips to the barber. Though his late wife's final wish was for him to take confession, for Walt — an embittered veteran of the Korean War who keeps his M-1 rifle cleaned and ready — there's nothing to confess. And no one he trusts enough to confess to other than his dog, Daisy.

The people he once called his neighbors have all moved or passed away, replaced by the Hmong immigrants he despises. Resentful of virtually everything he sees — the drooping eaves, overgrown lawns and the foreign faces surrounding him; the aimless gangs of Hmong, Latino and African American teenagers who all think the neighborhood belongs to them; the callow strangers his children have grown up to be — Walt is just waiting out the rest of his life.

Until the night someone tries to steal his Gran Torino.

Still gleaming as it did the day Walt himself helped roll it off the assembly line decades ago, the Gran Torino brings his shy teenaged neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) into his life when Hmong gang-bangers pressure the boy into trying to steal it.

But Walt stands in the way of both the heist and the gang, making him the reluctant hero of the neighborhood — especially to Thao's mother and older sister, Sue (Ahney Her), who insist that Thao work for Walt as a way to make amends. Though he initially wants nothing to do with these people, Walt eventually gives in and puts the boy to work fixing up the neighborhood, setting into motion an unlikely friendship that will change both their lives.

Through Thao and his family's unrelenting kindness, Walt eventually comes to understand certain truths about the people next door. And about himself. These people — provincial refugees from a cruel past — have more in common with Walt than he has with his own family, and reveal to him parts of his soul that have been walled off since the war...like the Gran Torino preserved in the shadows of his garage.

Warner Bros. Pictures, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, a Double Nickel Entertainment, a Malpaso Production, “Gran Torino.” The film is directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by Nick Schenk, story by Dave Johannson & Schenk. Eastwood, Robert Lorenz and Bill Gerber are the producers, with Jenette Kahn, Adam Richman, Tim Moore and Bruce Berman serving as executive producers.

“Gran Torino” will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.

The film has been rated R by the MPAA for “language throughout and some violence.”