Gran Torino
Like Disney meeting Dirty Harry over a Pabst Blue Ribbon or three, a surface examination of Clint Eastwood’s ‘Gran Torino‘ might suggest a film littered with clichés and meandering like that befuddled favourite uncle that always pops up with a story to tell. Well forgive yourself being wrong. Beneath the hood of this simple story there’s a film revving with charm.
The film tells the story of Korean Vet, and retired Ford factory worker, Walt Kowalski. His life is infused with bitterness, suffering the death off his beloved wife, the irritation of a pastor in pampers and rapid ethnic change in the neighbourhood, including septuagenarians hocking tobacco spit further than he can. He’s unloading bile faster than the old carbine rifle he keeps in a basement locker and when gangs begin to encroach on his Hmong neighbours, Sue (Ahney Her) and her brother Thao (Bee Vang), there’s a sense that even Walt will have to take a stand.
Recalling the greatest films of Sam Peckinpah this is an elegiac tale for a world that once was. You can see it in the proud, vehicular perfection of Walt’s coveted Ford Gran Torino. Part of a proud history of blue collar American workers. And Walt takes a quiet joy keeping it in a pristine condition that attracts the greedy eye of his granddaughter, the curiosity of Thao and the evil of the gangbangers that want to initiate him. Even so, it will always be a relic, in the same way that a gunslingers horse was to the first motor car. Except this time it’s the anorexic curves of technologically driven Japanese machines that even Walt’s no-good sons indulge in.
More importantly it represents a way of being. A muscle car masculinity if you will. While some might be shocked or appalled by the verbal virulence of Walt, the trite conditioned response of the tediously liberal, others will struggle to not find humour in the deadpan cannons fired out from his porch or at the barber shop; the funniest of which comes as he gives Thao his first lesson of manhood.
Whatever you might think, Walt’s attitude towards the multi-culturalisation of America is less about twisted amorality (he is after all of Polish descent) and more about what has been lost to him. The death of his wife cost him his anchor. That which grounded him, and kept the horrors of his past at bay. His apparent bigotry is him lashing out at a world he finds hard to understand. A more violent, impropriety world. Where good manners are lacking, and a man is more coward than lion.
While his dealings with the Hmong family next door seem banal, the dialogue has a ring of improvised, awkward truth about it. And there’s a genuine delight at seeing the slow erosion of that granite face as he warms to the Hmong and their culture. A change that might repel when presented as saccharine Hallmark card, but with the profound weight of Clint’s persona and force of will behind it, it’s impossible not to be touched by it.
Soon Walt’s ethnic slurs lose their bite, first through Sue and her youthful wit and seemingly resolute spirit (the shattering of this is one of the film’s genuine surprises), and then with Thao. And as the film makes its move down a darker path we see these outbursts for what they are; a protective barrier around Walt keeping people at bay, much like an ancient cowboy’s refusal to take on a sidekick, or a grizzled detective denying that offer of help. They, like Walt, as he admonishes himself for involving himself in the gang trouble, know the damage that can be done, and the pain that can be caused by people getting too close.
While the vigilante has become little more than a bolt-on to the action genre in recent times, Walt is less about the violent redemption and an exultation of the earlier boot heel justice and macho one-liner (though forgive yourself relishing one as punchy as, “ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while that you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me”). This is a fond farewell to Clint’s wielding of cinematic persona, plucking the best bits of his William Munny, Dirty Harry and The Man With No Name and suffusing them through a masterly, yet simply directed film.
As we see and also hear in the final few shots of the movie, like the Gran Torino, they don’t make them quite like Clint Eastwood anymore.
