Gran Torino (2008)

February 14, 2009

Majestic Bay Theater, Seattle, WA

** ½ / ****

By Scott Muoio

Old people will tell you that Gran Torino is the best movie of the year. The reason they believe it to be so is because they love heavy-handed, pseudo-realistic, old person dramas that promote “the old ways” as “the right way” to live a life. That philosophy, however, like their opinions, is out dated, silly, and dangerous. Indeed, there are more shades of grey to life and better ways to comment on racism than anything found in Gran Torino, and that is why the film fails. I laughed, I was entertained, but quite simply, Gran Torino, directed and starring 78 year old Clint Eastwood, is not the best movie of the year but rather a misguided attempt by the older generation to understand its youth.

As for the particulars, the film tells the story of Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a Korean War veteran struggling with his past as a formerly successful military killing machine. After the war, Walt left the military, got a job at the Ford Motor plant in Detroit, and spent the rest of his working days toiling on the assembly line. During that time he met his beloved wife, got married, had two children, and lived what many of that generation believed to be The American Dream. Now in his late 70s, Walt is alone, his wife is deceased, and his children are merely greedy for their potential inheritance. It is a story I suspect many of the older generation will be able to relate to in one way or another.

The drama of the movie, however, isn’t in Walt’s familial woes but rather the relationship he develops with a Hmong family that lives next door and the gang violence that pollutes his neighborhood. Seemingly the last white man standing in an increasingly racially diverse area, an odd disagreement on his neighbor’s front lawn leads Walt to inadvertently help Thao (Bee Vang), the boy next door. Walt’s ballsy act of intimidation both incurs the wrath of the gang that attempted to recruit Thao while simultaneously putting the boy in Walt’s debt. This strange bit of happenstance sets off a series of events where Walt mentors the boy while the gang sets out to gain revenge for the old man’s slanderous threats. All the while Walt throws off a seemingly endless stream of racial slurs directed at everyone and anyone as he gets closer to Thao and his family. They overlook the old man’s ignorance because, I suppose, the debt outweighs the pain his words might cause. In the end we are left with a neat bit of plot tying that finds every character get what he or she has coming to them, for better and worse.

Loaded with his seemingly endless arsenal of racial slurs, Walt is old school all the way, an ignorant man who believes that work is life, that keeping your nose to the grind stone is the only way to be a man, and that those who look different, talk different, and believe different are inferior. His philosophy is partially what made America the land it has become: arrive as an immigrant, live humbly with your own kind, work hard, save money, and then turn your hatred and scorn toward the next generation of other world immigrants hoping to do the same. It is an ironic philosophy yet one that resonates again and again with each subsequent generation of the American populace.

Where the movie flounders is in its heavy handed approach to race relations, gang violence, and familial ties. Zero subtlety is on display in the film as Walt’s family is portrayed as over-the-top money grubbing ingrates, the neighboring Hmong as overly grateful white man wannabes, and the gang-bangers as one-dimensional savages. Even Walt, himself is a caricature: a snarling, beer guzzling, social stain who never for a minute lets down his guard in preserving his title as The Crochiest Old Man of All Time. There are moments of truth in the film, like the friendships Walt has with his barber and a construction manager, but even these are tainted by the script’s absurd vocabulary and incessant portrayal of people as more obsessed with race and culture than a social anthropology professor.

Further, when Walt blooms from hard-nosed racist to semi-compassionate teacher, some of the lessons he teaches his prodigy recall the same mistakes he made with his own life. Live, learn, and use that knowledge to make things better is nowhere in the film’s message. Instead we get live, regret, and die miserably, a sad reality for some but not a lesson that is necessary viewing for anyone hoping to avoid a similar fate. Certainly Walt eliminates the largest road block in the way of young Thao’s chances at future success, but how many of his lessons are good and how many will cause Thao to become as bitter, jaded, and hateful as Walt?

If Gran Torino did one thing great it is open my eyes to the way movies have changed over the past decade. Where old, great films were once like Gran Torino, cut and dry, black and white, and by the book in terms of style, substance, and execution, today’s films dare to be different.

Take The Wrestler, for example, the best movie of the decade. The Wrestler tells the story of one man dealing with his past and coming to terms with his future, much the same as Gran Torino. But where that film represents the new age of cinema with its unorthodox tracking shots, subtle character traits, and emphasis on tone, realism, and an open-ended approach to numerous details, Gran Torino gives us exactly what we expect of an old school movie: bludgeoning drama without a whiff of subtlety.

This change in modern cinema has never been more apparent than with these two films. The Wrestler is fresh, honest, and real. Gran Torino is its opposite: contrived, heavy-handed, and lacking the self-awareness and open-endedness that separates this generation from the last. To put it another way, The Wrestler is the present, the future, and the best movie of the last ten years. Gran Torino, on the other hand is the last of the dinosaurs.

Director: Clint Eastwood

Producer: Clint Eastwood, Bill Gerber, Robert Lorenz

Writer: Nick Schenk (Story by Dave Johannson and Nick Schenk)

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley

Original Music: Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens

Cinematographer: Tom Stern