Gran Torino

So. I have been away on sabbatical for the last month because I’ve had better things to do than update a blog that no one reads. Since my viewers have increased exponentially (as in three people read this now), I have decided to continue until next month.

Gran Torino has gotten quite a bit of media attention recently (and by recently I mean a few months ago). I attribute this to Clint Eastwood and his legendary badass standing. It doesn’t matter how old you are, once a badass, always a badass (see Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal). However, I confess I was slightly disappointed with this movie.

Because of all the hype I half expected it to be another The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Sadly, no. Instead, I got a weird racist old man who hobbles around his house doing old man type activities, such as gardening and complaining about his neighbors. What I am given to understand is the plot of the movie is that Clint Eastwood (let’s be honest, Eastwood never has character names, he’s always Eastwood) tries to help his young Asian neighbor become a man and protect the boy and his sister from gang violence in the neighborhood.

While this may be the summary, nothing really happens the entire movie. Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration. Nothing INTERESTING happens the entire movie. Eastwood putters around and says racist things, people ignore his racism, he alienates his family, still not interested. I suppose this movie is meant to accentuate the differences in today’s society from the one that Eastwood’s character presumably grew up in, but that isn’t a message that people aren’t aware of. We all know the times have changed. This movie tries to show that we need to adapt to the multicultural nature of society while maintaining old society’s standards of honor, but this isn’t something new to the audience.

The most interesting thing in the movie is Eastwood’s Gran Torino. People just don’t make cars like they did in the 70’s. The car is meant as some sort of symbol for manhood and responsibility, but that really isn’t displayed in the movie at all. It seems like they just decided to add the car in because it looks cool (as good a reason as any).

That said, if you like slow movies where nothing meaningful or significant happens, go ahead and watch Gran Torino. If you are like me and want to watch something actually amusing, go and rent Dirty Harry or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.