Do you long for the days when Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry growled, “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?” Then you may get a tingly jolt watching the 70-something Clint stick a gun in the snoot of an Asian gang member in Gran Torino. On the other hand, you may just find yourself feeling really uncomfortable.
Clint plays Walt Kowalski, a wildly grumpy and racist widower who stubbornly clings to values picked up serving in the Korean War. His Detroit neighborhood, once the picture of Americana, is now a racial melting pot, and he spends his days drinking beer on the porch and muttering an endless stream of slurs at his Hmong neighbors. The neighbors’ son Thao (Bee Vang) is coerced by the local Asian gang into stealing Walt’s prized 1972 Gran Torino. Walt catches him, Thao works off his debt, and the two disparate cultures begin to achieve an uneasy understanding. Unfortunately, the Asian gang members aren’t as keen to journey down the road of enlightenment, and after a disturbing act of violence, Walt is forced to go all Dirty Har… rather, Dirty Grampy on their ass.
As a director and actor, Clint Eastwood has spent his career exploring the roots of American violence. In Gran Torino he correctly labels racism as one of its roots—and while Clint’s direction is as competent as ever, it’s really uncomfortable to cheer for a character whose racism is so unrepentant, or a script that repeatedly uses the word “gook” for laughs. It’s one thing to ignore the racist ramblings of your grandfather—he’s family. But paying good money to see what amounts to a geriatric Dirty Harry fighting racism with even more racism is just a bit too much for me to wrap my head around.
One thing I’ve heard about this movie is that you’re not really supposed to be cheering for Walt, or something like that. I just wish Eastwood would do a movie de-constructing Westerns.
Yeah, I kind of think you missed the point, Humpy. GRAN TORINO is essentially Eastwood giving the UNFORGIVEN treatment to the 70s justice-with-a-gun films he helped popularize. Whether it was as successful is up for debate, but that was clearly the film’s intention. It’s old-skool deconstructionism.
It’s the same technique that made THE SOPRANOS so good in its prime — where they’d spend four episodes getting you on Tony’s side, then slap you in the face and remind you that the guy’s a fucking sociopath, and what the hell are you doing rooting for him? Or like UNFORGIVEN, where you spend the entire movie waiting for the bad-ass to come out and when it finally does, you’re repulsed by it.
Beaton, did you even see the movie??? It’s nothing like Sopranos or unforgiven because in the end you are even more on the racist fuck’s side (he’s a fucking martyr in the end!). This movie sucked, you are supposed to be laughing at a racist pointing a gun at a black teens head, saying gook, and making tired dog-eating jokes. In the end you’re supposed to like the racist because he helps clean up the neughborhood and saves the day. Anybody who liked this movie is a fucking idiot or a racist.
Thanks, jj! Good to know that anyone who views a piece of art differently than you is wrong.
I liked this movie.
Maybe its me or your just a bunch of sensitive Nancy’s. One can use racial slurs without being racist, comedians do it all the time and people find it funny. Racism is not what the movie is about.