Dem Reviews: Gran Torino

url-1(MAY CONTAINER MILD SPOILERS) Clint Eastwood has reached another milestone in his epic career. I mean besides all his previous accomplishments, this one is something this generation will probably remember him the most for: the most racist character ever caught on celluloid. As war veteran Walt Kowalski, Clint injects some serious weight into his latest film Gran Torino and continues to earn all the accolades he been receiving with this release. But overall the film left me a bit empty. So how about we start off with the bad stuff. Will this film surpass his previous efforts? I’m not sure because as strong as Clint’s performance was, I think some of the other characters were kind of weak overall. Was it acting, screenplay or both?

I still haven’t had a chance to identify what it was but there was definitely something lacking as the universe around the Walt character never seemed as interesting to me as the protagonist. Call me childish but seeing & hearing Clint pull out all types of racial epithets keep me chuckling  (it was almost like watching a Bizarro Dave Chapelle) and it seems like the screenwriter just decided to sprinkle way too much of that into the film and then play the “oh you see: racism is bad” card. Instead it was saturated and made the dialogue laughable when it shouldn’t have been. That sole aspect detracted from all the other characters as they never got to reach those heights and hence suffered from a certain detachment from the audience.

Writing a character as strong as Walt needs to have some balancing supporting help and I never saw them manifest completely. But they still made their presence known. Fresno born Bee Vang was successful in portraying Thao and was a good counterpoint to the Walt character but I was left hoping to see more conflict between the two as the film moved along but I got nothing. Instead I was left seeing Clint Eastwood carry the sagging character throughout the rest of the film like he was an injured soldier back in Korea, a victim of a script bullet that Vang was unable to dodge no matter how awesome his acting chops. And then there’s the gang members. Well, if you’ve seen any other movies with gang members in it, you’ve already seen these guys.

Aight, now here’s what I did like about the film. Eastwood is Eastwood and he played the part magically. But what really enlightened me was the introduction of the Hmong culture to mainstream America. Most people in this country know very little about this culture (shit, a lot of people here in town don’t know, including myself) and it’s good to see it getting a proper introduction to the world. Sure, some would argue that spotlighting the gang aspect of the culture might seem like a bad thing but not ackowledging it would of been worse. They exist, it’s an unfortunate part of the Hmong culture but it had to have been displayed. I think ultimately, this will be what the film will be known for (other than a racist ass Clint) and it’s not a horrible introduction.

Overall the film was entertaining but not spectacular. Will this be on my Top 10 of 2008 (yeah, I’m lagging)? Probably not. But it was better than a lot of the crap out there so far. Yup, cliche but that’s all you get for this one.

Stars: 3 out of 5

4 comments

    1. I just think it’s kinda weird that it’s showing up on all these top 5 lists and I can’t help but to think it’s merely off the weight of the Eastwood name. Good film but not that good…

  1. You’re not alone on this one. I think the writing was quite poor and the acting really hurt the movie. I would even go so far as to say that at times it seemed as though Clint may have handed over the directing the reigns.

    The racial slurs and bigotry were about as effective as the violence in Natural Born Killers and I don’t think the majority of the viewing audience got it in either case. In both cases I believe it showed how desensitized we can and have become.

    My parents saw the movie the day before, so my dad and I discussed how realistic the barber shop scene was. We used to get our haircuts at Joe’s Barber Shop. It was located next to Handyman at First and Shields back in the day. Aside from the empty chairs, Eastwood captured perfectly what it was like to be in a barber shop.

    The one positive I see coming from this movie is that the Hmong culture has been given a voice. Having Eastwood, a prominent, white, actor/director involved was the best thing possible. We were surrounded by “blue” hairs in the theater, so hopefully it will open their eyes a bit about these “strangers” in the neighborhood. I can’t recall another film that has brought the culture of a minority group to the masses like this one.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *