HEART LOCKED IN A GRAN TORINO

So, Gran Torino is a pretty awesome movie. It's not as action-y as the trailers make it look (though 'ol Clint kicks some serious ass for a 78 year-old), in fact, it's a really appealingly old-fashioned melodrama with a good dose of comedy.

Much has been made of Eastwood's supposed retirement after this role (personally, I'll believe he's retired when he dies), but if this is truly it, Gran Torino is a great career caper, with a character who reminds us of why we always love Eastwood (the twitches, the growls, the scowls) and a winning story at its core.

There's also been some ire directed towards the film for its, uh, liberal use of racial slurs but, really, they're used in service of a point about the greater realities of race relations in the modern world (and I've heard a lot of older people in the real world talk in the same ways, so, let's not pretend this is unheard of). Now, I will admit some of the stuff made me uncomfortable (in particular, the part where Eastwood calls a group of black teenagers a bunch of "spooks", and , even there, it was more an issue of a stereotypical portrayal than of what was actually said) but it's necessary for the film to show us that; to show us how this guy is changed by his friendship with the Hmong family next door even while he drifts further away from his own family. And, for the most part, the race-baiting was in the context of friendly insulting, as best demonstrated in a hilarious scene where Eastwood takes the Hmong teenager to a barber shop to teach him how to talk like a real man. The comedy worked, the drama worked, the action worked.

I have only a few, mostly minor, complaints: some of the supporting acting could have been better and some of the tonal shifts between the comedy and the drama were a bit abrupt. Also, I don't buy that any family would let their teenage daughter wear a belly shirt to a funeral (disclaimer: most of the girls I know wouldn't be caught dead in one of those, so, I may not be the best person to judge this), even if it did make for a hilarious scene where Eastwood glowered at her.

It's a movie that leaves you with a smile but a bit of melancholy, and the end credits song is awesome. I'm sure that one could write a paper on all of the dynamics (race, class, age, heck, even gender) going on in the theatre in which my friends and I (who were sitting right behind one of our school's English teachers) saw it, given that it was jam-packed with middle-class white people of greatly varying ages (seriously, there were, like, grandparents and 14 year-olds in there), all laughing and/or going "did he just say that?" in unison at all of the racial remarks. But you could also just forget about that and get swept up in a great story with Eastwood's, all always, great direction backing it up.