Life lessons from a cowboy

In Gran Torino Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker with a bad attitude and a lot of free time on his hands. Now this is a man who could well be the pictorial reference for the word curmudgeon, and he goes farther out of his way than any other man in his advancing years might, to piss off everybody from his family, to his neighbours, to his wife's favourite priest. He doesn't like anybody and he doesn't care if nobody likes him.

As he sits on his porch with an icebox of his favourite beer by his side and his pet dog Daisy by his feet, Kowalski looks around him and wonders what happened to his world. He lives in a neighbourhood where his is the only home still owned by a white man. His next door neighbours are an immigrant Hmong family and little by little the lives of the kids from that household, Sue (Ahney Her) and her brother Thao (Bee Vang), begin to intertwine with the single strand of his own existence.

At first he does not like them, or their weird customs and rituals, but as time passes by he warms to the two kids. He rescues Sue from a potential street corner assault one day, drives away some Hmong gang members when they attempt to harass her brother and later he even goes so far as to take Thao under his wing. All the while, his interactions with these neighbours from an alien culture are placed in sharp contrast to his interactions with members of his own family.

Because this is a movie, one cannot expect that a 'happily ever after' situation will be reached without some serious conflict beforehand. In Gran Torino, a few incidents of violence that serve as punctuation build up towards a final confrontation that will redefine several inter-personal equations between Walt and his new neighbours.

Gran Torino is partly a parable about an unchanging man in an ever changing world and partly an opportunity for Eastwood to play cowboy for one last time. Apparently the film's leading man [and director] has claimed that this will be his last time in front of the camera. It must be said that for a man of his vintage [hell even for men twenty years younger than him] he looks pretty good. Sure he moves a little slower and he might be a little soft around the mid-section but this man looks like he could still lift weights and outlast his grandkids at a round of brisk calisthenics.

That being said, the best way to describe this movie is to call it uneven. Most of the Hmong actors are first-timers, and it shows. Ahney Her looks comfortable in front of the camera but her line readings and the timing of her delivery draws attention to itself by being less than expected of a movie of this stature.

Bee Vang is the same and since he is saddled with the role of the 'weird' kid he gets away with it for the most part, except when the scenes require him to emote with some degree of conviction.

Eastwood is what Eastwood does and he plays the salty, foul-mouthed senior citizen with what appears to approach total glee [see there's no real way to tell if Mr Eastwood is genuinely happy because he doesn't communicate joy in the way most people might].

The film explores universal themes of alienation, finding harmony, and the healing power of acceptance and while other stories before this might have succeeded because of their settings, Torino works because of its cast. Casting of a group of actors who actually were real people before this movie came along helps rather than hinders and the unevenness simply adds another layer of believability to the proceedings. One can't help feeling though, that stronger editorial control could have made this movie feel less amateurish than it does in its present state.

All around us, debates about the relevance of family and the true value of friends are certain to become more common as our global exposure increases. For those who might have already begun the discussion this film might provide visual proof for one position or the other. Depending upon your position this could be the feel-good [or feel-bad] movie of this still young year.

Rediff Rating: