Blogorium Review: Gran Torino

editor's note warning: this post repeats a number of potentially offensive terms that may be offensive to readers. you have been warned.

After debating the relative merits of each last night, your Cap'n chose to go with "grouchy racist old man angry at the world" and watch Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. I don't regret it one bit.

Let's get the limited negatives out of the way: 1. the acting, Eastwood aside, can be a little lacking. It's not such a big deal that it's going to drive you crazy, but the young priest is particularly awkward. Thankfully, he only pops up sporadically during the film. 2. The story has some contrivances to it, as most "grouchy old dude learns to appreciate yadda yadda" movies do. However, Gran Torino makes up for all of them in a way I'll get to shortly. 3. While it didn't really work on me, I think that Eastwood and the screenwriters are trying to trick you into sympathizing with the way a unrepentantly racist dude sees the world for the first half of the movie. I could see how some people might want to cheer for Clint saying badass, if totally inappropriate, things including a joke I'll just go ahead and repeat here:

"A Spic, a Jew, and a Black guy walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says 'Get the fuck out of here.'"

I'll admit I laughed, but incredulously. As with most of the things that come out of Walt Kowalski's mouth, I was more surprised at how far they were willing to take this "racist" side than you'd expect. You don't hear much of "punk" in this movie. Instead, Clint growls the following (and many other) insults / epithets:

Wop, Spade, Spook, Dipshit, Mick, Swamp Rat, Chink, Peckerhead, Gook, Shithead, Barbarian, Fish-Eye, and Faggot*.

The frequency that Walt hurls them, both muttered and flagrantly, is a little surprising. I think the movie that comes closest to Gran Torino in its unapologetic use of "offensive" language is Bad Santa, and I like both of them for the same reason. Their protagonists never give up on being assholes.

Both stories about guys who've had it with life. Everything turned to shit and Walt and Willie are angry at the world and take it out in every direction. Walt's wife just died, and his useless children and even more worthless grandchildren go through the motions, right down to suggesting he go to a retirement home. Walt's neighborhood has slowly gone to hell and he's the only non-Asian person still living there, so he's pissed off about that too. Then one of the neighborhood kids tries to steal his 1972 Gran Torino as a gang initiation, so you know he's going to be mad about that. Of course, this being a movie about old guys being grouchy and learning to appreciate life, there has to be some calming down. I mean, even Willie met stupid Thurman and the lady with a Santa fetish, right?

Ultimately, the way that Gran Torino (like Bad Santa) overcomes its story limitations is that while Walt Kowalski softens up a bit towards his Hmong neighbors, he's still an asshole and doesn't know / care that he's doing it all the way to the end. There's a scene where Walt, on his birthday, throws out his kids because they want him to move to a retirement home. One of his neighbors comes over and invites him to a barbecue and he decides "what the hell" and goes over, and promptly makes an ass of himself.

Most movies would be happy to end the scene right there and move to the next sequence of Walt learning his lessons, but Gran Torino keeps him over there. After insulting the Hmong people three different ways, Walt gets to stick around, try some food, and make "nice" with the Fish-Eyes. And it sorta, kinda happens. They're certainly polite to him and he seems pretty pleased to have company. He even fixes their dryer just because he notices it's wobbly. Then, because he's learning his lesson and all, he berates Thao (the would-be car thief) for not picking up on a girl's signals and telling him he "has no balls."

I guess that's what I like about this movie; it's not trying to turn Walt all the way around in a way that never really happens. He calms down a little bit, but most of his simmering rage is still intact and, in some cases, totally justified. It works because Clint Eastwood takes his grizzled bad-ass and let's him change in organic ways. Nothing feels forced about Kowalski, even if some of the other characters (the priest in particular) seem to be plot devices more than characters. You want Walt to cool down a little bit, even if you can understand why he's so angry. I mean, his kids are pretty good-for-nothing, and that gang is full of idiots.

Before I go, I want to mention one other tiny subplot that made me laugh every time: Walt's neighbors include three generations of Hmong, but the one that stands out is the grandmother, who is every bit as old and grouchy as he is. In what's probably my favorite scene, both are sitting on the porch, muttering about how much they hate the other one (in their respective languages), and then Clint spits out some tobacco. The old lady stares at him, then spits out an even bigger wad of tobacco, and Clint just looks at her and says "huh."

Gran Torino may have some built in flaws and shaky supporting actors, but it overcomes both problems (and the potential of being pro-racist) because of how good Clint Eastwood is at playing the tough guy. He's been doing this for years, and something about the grizzled features and that growl of a voice say "do not fuck with me." When he says "Get off my lawn", and the dude tells him to go back inside, you're not worried about the old guy. That punk kid needs to get the hell off of Clint's lawn, and he does. I'll be bummed if Gran Torino is, in fact, Eastwood's last role as an actor (as it has been suggested), but he went out on a high note.



* Yes, I too notice a word conspicuously absent from that list. Instead, Eastwood says spook or spade, but never the "N" bomb.