February 9, 2009
Gran Torino is for Eastwood what The Shootist was for Wayne: the perfect film to end a legend's career. John Wayne bowed out in a movie that acknowledged his hard man image and undercut it. Gran Torino does the same for Eastwood. It's a scintillating, multi-layered and moving film.
But hopefully Clint will make many more movies. At nearly 80, he's doing his best work. Hot on the heels of the exceptional Changeling, Gran Torino plays with his screen persona in a sensitive drama of racial tension, ageing and loneliness.
Eastwood is Walt, a Korean War veteran, retired from his blue collar trade in the Detroit car factory where he made his cherished Gran Torino automobile. A widower, Walt passes his time sipping beer on his porch, looking at his car and watching disapprovingly as the neighbourhood accommodates yet more Vietnamese families.
When the next door Hmong lad is bullied into stealing the Gran Torino as part of a gangland initiation, Walt catches him and puts him to work. But getting to know the boy and his feisty sister (an excellent Ahney Her), Walt finds a family far closer to him than his own gold-digging relatives. And when the gangs won't leave the kids alone, he decides to face them down once and for all.
Eastwood beautifully toys with his 'make my day' Dirty Harry image. Gravelly voiced, he menacingly warns the gang to 'get off my lawn'. And when the young girl is hassled by some bad-ass boys, he reaches into his jacket and slowly pulls out his hand, shaped like a gun. The hoods are non-plussed: it's deliberately comic, genuinely dramatic and almost poetic.
Eastwood has a field day, spitting out a never-ending flow of off-colour racial insults. The script is both outrageous and touching. But underneath the veneer of sneering resentment is a lonely, confused man who can't cope with a world he thinks is changing for the worst. One thing we know about the director of Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima - he's no racist. And Gran Torino is a powerhouse of a movie, deftly handling humour and pathos.
Upending expectations throughout, Gran Torino is an almost exhilarating experience as Eastwood reaches into the raw reality of these people’s lives. Some may call him sentimental: but as with Changeling, Eastwood's real motif is hope. And while it eluded Will Munny in Unforgiven and Frankie Dunn in Million Dollar Baby, it's a theme that seems to echo in Eastwood's most recent movies.
Clint composed the superb soft-jazz soundtrack to Changeling. In Gran Torino, he even sings over the end-credit soundtrack, penned by his jazz musician son, Kyle. Forty years after Paint Your Wagon, it’s a poignant touch.
No-one today makes films like Eastwood - elegiac yet shot through with a fresh-eyed vision; a cinema of real humanity. An impressive distillation of virtually every film he's ever made, Gran Torino is a fitting tribute to a surprisingly complex man.
But hopefully Clint will make many more movies. At nearly 80, he's doing his best work. Hot on the heels of the exceptional Changeling, Gran Torino plays with his screen persona in a sensitive drama of racial tension, ageing and loneliness.
Eastwood is Walt, a Korean War veteran, retired from his blue collar trade in the Detroit car factory where he made his cherished Gran Torino automobile. A widower, Walt passes his time sipping beer on his porch, looking at his car and watching disapprovingly as the neighbourhood accommodates yet more Vietnamese families.
When the next door Hmong lad is bullied into stealing the Gran Torino as part of a gangland initiation, Walt catches him and puts him to work. But getting to know the boy and his feisty sister (an excellent Ahney Her), Walt finds a family far closer to him than his own gold-digging relatives. And when the gangs won't leave the kids alone, he decides to face them down once and for all.
Eastwood beautifully toys with his 'make my day' Dirty Harry image. Gravelly voiced, he menacingly warns the gang to 'get off my lawn'. And when the young girl is hassled by some bad-ass boys, he reaches into his jacket and slowly pulls out his hand, shaped like a gun. The hoods are non-plussed: it's deliberately comic, genuinely dramatic and almost poetic.
Eastwood has a field day, spitting out a never-ending flow of off-colour racial insults. The script is both outrageous and touching. But underneath the veneer of sneering resentment is a lonely, confused man who can't cope with a world he thinks is changing for the worst. One thing we know about the director of Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima - he's no racist. And Gran Torino is a powerhouse of a movie, deftly handling humour and pathos.
Upending expectations throughout, Gran Torino is an almost exhilarating experience as Eastwood reaches into the raw reality of these people’s lives. Some may call him sentimental: but as with Changeling, Eastwood's real motif is hope. And while it eluded Will Munny in Unforgiven and Frankie Dunn in Million Dollar Baby, it's a theme that seems to echo in Eastwood's most recent movies.
Clint composed the superb soft-jazz soundtrack to Changeling. In Gran Torino, he even sings over the end-credit soundtrack, penned by his jazz musician son, Kyle. Forty years after Paint Your Wagon, it’s a poignant touch.
No-one today makes films like Eastwood - elegiac yet shot through with a fresh-eyed vision; a cinema of real humanity. An impressive distillation of virtually every film he's ever made, Gran Torino is a fitting tribute to a surprisingly complex man.