Actor Clint Eastwood a veteran of over 50 years in film and television is a man who knows himself and knows the limits and changes that age and infirmity have placed upon him. As his most famous screen character so aptly remarked a man has to know his limitations. Director Clint Eastwood is nothing short of a genius in the performances he got from the two young Asian kids, both of whom were making their screen debuts and in fact from the rest of his Asian cast members, most of whom were new.
Both the boy and the girl were just fabulous and so real as kids, not at all like Hollywood teen player types. And both kids face some very typical choices that all youngsters face today, especially those growing up in areas at or below the poverty line.
Especially the boy who's being pressured to join a gang. Clint himself is facing old age issues, but he still mentors the kids and in the end does what a man's got to do. It took four years for actor Eastwood to reappear on the screen again. But it was worth the wait. After the death of his wife he becomes even more distant but things start to change when his neighbor Bee Vang tries to steal his Gran Torino.
Walt eventually comes around to befriending the boy and trying to teach him the right ways of doing things but a local gang has their own ideas for the boy.
I was a little caught off guard with the opening ten-minutes, which were over the top in us getting to know Walt. I think Eastwood really pushed the envelope in showing us what a mean guy this was but in the end these scenes really paid off. I wasn't expecting too much out of this film but it turned out to be another winner for the director. What really shocked me is all the humor in the film, which mostly comes from Eastwood's racist views and names.
Believe it or not the comedy coming from this stuff is very strong but once again there's a reason for this. It's not that racism is funny but it goes back to being soft or politically correct in today's world. The film tackles all sorts of subjects and, once again, I was amazed at how much of a character study this was. The screenplay allows each and every character to grow right in front of our eyes and this includes Eastwood's character, the young boy, his sister, his family, the gang members and even the neighborhood.
This isn't a film for dummies, so to speak, because it requires the viewer to do a lot of thinking and I'm sure fifty-people could watch this and walk away with a different opinion on what its message is. There's no doubt Eastwood wanted to make a statement on today's issues but at the same time he struck true to the nature of our main guy. As for Eastwood the actor, I wouldn't argue that this is his greatest performance.
It's hard to say considering how many great roles he has had but I believe this one will certainly go well with Dirty Harry. The amount of growth Eastwood gives his character was really fun to watch and his comic timing has never been better. The seriousness of the growl in his voice is also in fine form giving fans a lot of great one-liners. There's been some different opinions on the supporting players but I thought they all did fine work and that includes Vang and Ahney Her as the sister.
Christopher Carley is also quite good as the local priest. This is a film that doesn't rush into anything and instead it takes its time to deliver the message it wants.
It's very doubtful anyone but Eastwood would or could have made a film about a racist who also happens to be the hero of the movie but that's what Eastwood has always been about.
The film has a lot of balls in its message, open politically incorrect attitude and its honesty, which includes the ending. If Eastwood really does retire from acting after this one he leaves us a great film and character to talk about. It's not even an action film, or a thriller, despite containing elements from those genres: in actual fact, it's a solid human drama about human relationships, along with ruminations on plenty of issues affecting today's world: immigration, integration into society, crime, violence, friendship, life and death, regret.
I can't imagine anyone but Clint Eastwood starring in this film. Eastwood plays his usual character, except older, more frail than more; perhaps the word I'm thinking of is 'more human'. Whatever, he's absolutely astounding in this film, giving a brilliant performance as Walt Kowalski, a foul-mouthed, irritable old racist who gradually uncovers his humanity as the story progresses.
Eastwood surrounds himself with a cast of unknowns, and these actors are also triumphant. Bee Vang, as Thao, Eastwood's initial enemy and then friend, has to be singled out as giving one of the best turns, and he's matched by Ahney Her who plays his sister, Sue. I loved the performances of these two actors, who successfully manage to hold their own against Clint.
The ending is particularly true to life, a neat twist that defies audience expectations. The script is sparkling and witty, never losing focus of the main themes, and also particularly moving without being sentimental. It's a difficult line to walk, but this film manages it.
In all, a delight and one of the best Eastwood movies I've watched. This one's a keeper. SnoopyStyle 26 January He's a hard cold man of a different generation. The next door neighbor boy is shy Thao who gets wrangled into trying to steal Walt's Gran Torino by his older gangster cousin.
There are lots of easy stereotypes. Clint is playing the hard man. It might as well be the man with no name in the hood. Clint is acting with a bunch of nobodies. That's the biggest problem in this movie. The other actors are not up to snuff. The only one capable is the girl Ahney Her who can only really hold her own.
In the end, we love this Clint character. That's all that matters. He is compelling, and we have all grown up with this character. We know him. The movie is the better for it. Hitchcoc 10 September I enjoyed this film. Eastwood is about as snarly as I've ever seen him. He has taken Archie Bunker to the next level.
He terrorizes his neighbors, is hateful to his children, and incredibly intolerant of a changing world.
With that said, this is a story about redemption. It comes in small increments and the charm is not in what happens eventually, but what happens in each small doses. His slow developing relationship with the Hmong family next door.
Because he steps in in a crisis situation, their culture sees him as a hero and sets out to reward him. They bring him endless presents and food. Because he leads such a lonely existence, he is slowly, but surely, pulled in. He keeps a balance of hatred for the punks he sees with a true love for those who have befriended him.
The other thing is just watching a masterful actor take on this role and squeeze every last drop out of it. Prismark10 1 April Walt Kowalski Clint Eastwood is recently widowed and hates the world. This curmudgeon does not get on well with his sons, one of them even sells Japanese cars. Walt is a former army veteran who fought in Korea and then worked for years in the Ford motor factory.
Walt's neighbourhood are full of foreigners. He is racist towards his Hmong neighbours who came here from Vietnam. One of them young, meek Thao is dared by his gangster cousin to steal Walt's Gran Torino as an initiation right. Thao fails and comes first into conflict with Walt. When Thao is sent over by his family to do some chores for Walt as a punishment. Walt gets to understand the problems facing the young man and his family's plight. Gran Torino was an inexplicable hit in the USA.
It obviously touched a nerve to those Tea Party types, who believe in things such as: Our country is going to the dogs. Cars built to last by workers living in safe white communities. It is a cynical and manipulative film. Eastwood holds his punches when it comes to racial insults. Walt's a racist but his racial insults are from the s.
Warner Brothers knew if you really insulted blacks and asians, then people would boycott the film. There is only one white youth we see in this film outside of Walt's family. He gets attacked by some black people and runs away leaving his Hmong girlfriend at the mercy of these young black guys. Good job Walt comes along. Walt's neighbours, the Hmong family gets attacked by a gang led by their cousin. It is never made clear why a family member would do this or even want some nerdy guy like Thao in the gang.
The film is a mess. There are better grouchy old men films than Gran Torino. He is one of the last Caucasian Americans in his neighborhood and does not have good relationship with his sons and their families; therefore he is a lonely man.
However he is surprised by the old man and his traditional family feels ashamed with the incident. Later Walt saves Thao first and his sister Sue Lor Ahney Her later from gangs and he has the gratitude of his next door neighbors and the Asian neighborhood.
On the day of his birthday, Walt is invited by Sue to join her family reunion and he begins a relationship with his neighbors, helping Thao to get a job. However he realizes that the Hmong gang disturbs the neighborhood and after a coward attack of the gangsters to Sue, Walt decides to take an ultimate attitude. It is amazing how Clint Eastwood is able to have only great movies in his long filmography.
I believe most of the viewers were expecting a bloodshed in the end, and the coherent conclusion surprised me. I hope this is not the last movie of this great American actor and director. My vote is nine. Title Brazil : "Gran Torino". Having been recently widowed, Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski finds himself all alone in a community that has seen all his former neighbours replaced with members of the Hmong community.
Racist, aggressive, distant from his family, Walt is living out his days with beer on his porch, watching the world go by with a gruff sense of disgust. Gran Torino is one of the films that benefited from the Oscar buzz around one certain aspect. Much like Mickey Rourke's performance made people think that The Wrestler was perhaps a better all round film than it was, so talk of an acting Oscar for Eastwood has put this film into the public mind as being "Oscar-worthy", even if that has been knocked into a cocked hat before it reached the UK.
This perception is the only thing I can think of that has motivated so many IMDb users to vote so highly on this title well, that and the fact that some users will vote 10 or 0 and nothing in between because this is not a particularly good film by any means.
If you read the boards all you will hear about is the standard of acting being a problem but for me the problems start with the script. You see this is a film that really needs convincing and careful character development to make it work. Sadly this is not what we get as the film is written in steps without a lot of attention to getting between these steps in a way that feels real or convincing.
The overall arch of the film is engaging in these steps and I did not have an issue with the actual plot but too often it just feels clunky and clumsy in the writing and it gets weaker and weaker as it goes on. As director, Eastwood cannot fix the problems with the script but he is almost good enough to cover it in his own performance.
This makes him watchable but the material limits him and fortunately the Oscar voters have not been taken in by sentimentality on this occasion. By comparison though he is fantastic because the commendable idea of casting Hmong actors in their debut performances backfires badly with key players failing to deliver. Ahney Her's Sue doesn't even really manage that and, while a "nice" presence she doesn't feel natural and I didn't engage with her or see why Walt would.
One person without the excuse of language or inexperience is Carley who is pretty awful but in fairness is given probably the weakest material out of everyone. The whole thing is a really weak film that sums it all up perfectly with a terrible song with terrible singing from Eastwood. This is the final misjudgement of many but the root of it all is the script which takes a basic premise and delivers it in chunky blocks that don't really scan and pushes the viewer away when it should draw them in.
Things that should have an impact don't really work because of this and, although Eastwood is a solid presence, he cannot find much to really work with. The performances outside of him are roundly poor and the main players lack the range to deliver when required.
While the trailer might have led you to believe this could be another episode of Dirty Harry Callahan or "What would a retired Dirty Harry do? Yes the character depicted here by Clint Eastwood, has some similarities with his "Dirty Harry" character, but "in the end", he's very different from him you will get what I mean, if you watch the movie. Watching Clint act, you wonder how he does it. I'm happy that while he's dedicated more time to direct movies, he still finds the time to act too in this case doing both things , finding roles for himself that have an arc woven into the story.
Eastwood, at the age of 78, can carry off the essentially comic combination of elderly mannerisms and cowboy menace.
He has his belt hitched up high like an old geezer and his short-sleeved shirt reveals his wrinkly elbows, and his long senior-citizen forearms. Yet there is something potent about his narrow-eyed gaze of righteous loathing, a facial tic perhaps learned originally by leaning into a telescopic gunsight; it's a crinkling of the eye muscles that also brings the corners of his mouth out into a silent snarl.
When relaxed, and even smiling, his face resembles the one shown on his creased wedding photo: the one he had as a boy. Very often, Walt communicates only in a soft growl, an inchoate version of the whispery-croaky threats and insults that are his stock in trade. There is a bravura moment when Walt rolls past in his pickup, just as black guys are threatening Thao's smart, feisty cousin Sue Ahney Her , while she is out walking with a local white boy who ingratiatingly, and catastrophically, tries to affect gangsta style to placate them.
The cranky old grandpa faces them down and even pulls a gun, then subtly establishes his psychological mastery of the situation by making it clear he shares the blacks' contempt for Sue's creepy pseudo-urban date: "They're not your 'bro', and I don't blame them! The politics of racial insult become even more complex when Walt takes Thao on a visit to his local barber in order to give him a masterclass in the friendly exchange of insults traditionally performed by this "polack" and "wop".
When Thao tries it, the barber is furious and from nowhere produces a pump-action shotgun. The lesson is clear. Knockabout ethnic comedy is OK when it is performed by your white elders and betters.
Like its hero, this movie is a great big sentimental softie under its tough-guy persona. Still very conservative, though. Best movie ever!!! Kid, 9 years old August 30, Great Good movie. Teen, 17 years old Written by abbacus June 18, Really good!
I wish there was not so much language. But it's still a great movie! Fine for mature, older teens. Teen, 13 years old Written by Shamester April 30, Has Swearing, but a positive message. This Movie is about a Veteran of the korean War who has Hmong neighbors moving in. This is a great movie with a positive message, but swearing and racism is an issue.
Teen, 15 years old Written by Legend April 21, Great film,Eastwood is amazing Educational and moving. Teen, 14 years old Written by No Name, for real. February 25, This title contains: Language. Teen, 14 years old Written by Justino4 February 15, I watched the cencored version on TV and I already know the movie's chock full of racist slurs and offensive language. The whole movie, the character's mouths weren't even matching what was said.
It got to the point of annoyance. This title contains: Sexy stuff. Teen, 14 years old Written by laceynoelle97 December 1, I'm glad I did. It was absolutely amazing, but the fact that common sense places most focus on the racism of the movie really doesn't do it justice. Yes, racism is an issue I didn't think about racism once one character was raped and the others were shot at Eastwood was clearly trying to do more than call attention to racism in this masterpiece, I truly believe that the themes in this movie are critical- and if you miss them The ending was bittersweet, and I was furious for the last 20 minutes or so of the movie This movie couldn't have been done any better My only concern is the language But i would definitely recommend this movie to my mature friends, it's not something for kids, and kids wouldn't get the overall theme anyway.
Teen, 14 years old Written by Brybry July 20, Greatest Movie. At first walt wasnt a role model, but when he starts loving the Asians he starts to take care of "toad" he loves them all now, but when them gangsters start coming around, it gets violent, but still it is to protect them all. And that his sister gets raped, then Walt gets very angry, at the end is just pure sad.
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