Gran Torino (2008)

29Jan09

Gran Torino IMDB Link

Directed By: Clint Eastwood

Written By: Nick Schenk

Starring: Clint Eastwood

When you take a ridiculous plot and make it dead serious you get a movie like Gran Torino. Heck, even the name sounds dead serious. So what would motivate anyone to see a dead serious movie with an after-school special plot? Well to watch an old white man shoot, swear at and beat the shit out of minorities who are on his lawn obviously.

Eastwood does a great job playing the role where he spits playful racist barbs at minorities and grumbles like an old man about what the world has become. The first half of the film is littered with great jokes and through this sort of old school manly banter we get to learn about his character. You start out chuckling out of shock at Walt but then your engulfed into his world. If there’s a glaring weakness with the film (aside from the premise) it has nothing to do with Eastwood’s acting but rather that of the rest of the actors. Some of the acting is just downright cringe-worthy and I don’t know if that was an attempt from Clint to be more “real” or what but it wasn’t working.

But for all the bad acting the film never lingers and even makes you really care about this beaten down old man and his relationships. There are a lot of laughs and over the top (yet serious) moments that try to really push a point home. Ultimately, aside from the acting, I think this is probably the best film you can make out of an absurd idea done in a dead serious manner. Eastwood is great to watch and the racist charm and quiet moments never get old.

But for all it’s comedy and racist charm I can’t help but think that this movie would have been 10 times better if it had been done as a blaxploitation film about white people moving into a black neighborhood. Instead of the stuffy sounding Gran Torino it could have been something hilarious like Black Mortgage. And instead of a white craggily old man teaching us about racial divides and the heartwarming idea that you can make up for your sins, we could have had 2 hours of Sam Jackson blowing away rich white people dropping one liners like, “Gentrify this bitch”

*Boom head-shot*

Now that’s a movie folks. The only thing I would keep from Gran Torino would be the credits music which features Mr. Eastwood attempting to sing over a sappy piano. Yes, my mouth was wide open in shock when it started to play, wide open.

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Tags: blaxploitation, Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino, movie review