Review: Gran Torino

#88 - Gran Torino


Gran Torino is a film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, starring Clint Eastwood. It centers around a broken down area of Detroit. Walt Kowalski, a Vietnam veteran, has just lost his wife and is learning how to adapt to living on his own. He is living in a neighborhood that once flourished, but now it is overrun by the Hmong people and a dangerous gang. The boy next door, Thao, gets caught up in trouble and tries to steal Walt's 1972 Gran Torino. His family is dishonored by this, so they force Thao to work for Walt to repay his debt. While Thao is working for Walt, they form a bond with each other, and Walt becomes a mentor and friend to this boy next door. Just when Thao seems to be out of harm's way, the local gang comes around and tries to bully Thao into joining. Walt doesn't take kindly to this treatment, and so he threatens the gang and pulls a gun on one of its members. The gang retaliates - raping Thao's sister and shooting up his family's home. Walt has had enough, and he realizes that the only way Tao will have a chance at a successful future is if the gang is eliminated and taken off the streets. Walt sacrifices his own life - taunting the gang members into shooting him with several witnesses watching. The gang goes to jail, and Thao is safe to live a happy life.

This film has such a good story, but the acting is awful in it. Clint Eastwood is awesome, of course, because he plays the ornery old man quite well; however, the Asian cast members don't have a single acting bone in their bodies. Half the time you can't even make out what they're saying because they are speaking so quickly and quietly, and the other half of the time you're so distracted by their dead pan facial expressions that you're not even really listening to what's happening in the scene.  Ahney Her, who plays Thao's sister, Sue, is the worst of them. There's a scene when she is challenging three black men on a street corner. It doesn't seem real at all. It's very awkward, and the three guys aren't very intimidating. I'm sorry, if I was being harassed by three men, whether they are black or not, I would be scared if I had no one there to protect me...which she doesn't, at first, because the guy with her is a wimpy white kid that's trying to fit into the urban environment around him (if you get my drift). Naturally, Walt Kowalski is there to save the day.
Even the pastor, Father Janovich, is a bad actor. He seems disconnected from the people he is talking to, and there is no way that he would take the lord's name in vain IN A CHURCH or drink with one of his "flock" when he's on the job...which is ALWAYS because he's a PASTOR! Now that I think of it, maybe it's not 100% the actors' faults. I think it might just be bad coaching on the director's part. Overall, it's a good story, but when you look at the staging in each scene, it's bad...just really bad. Maybe Clint Eastwood should only focus on one thing at a time, instead of directing, producing, AND starring in a movie. It lacked, definitely, on the talent side.

There's a lot wrong with the film...if you didn't pick up on that already. It has some funny lines from Clint Eastwood's side of it, but I don't necessarily think they're funny because they're really funny; I think they're funny because they're coming from an 80-year-old war veteran living in the middle of the ghetto.

Overall, I have no idea why I bought this movie. It's not a horrible film, so I'm not bummed for owning it; however, I am not exactly sure WHY I own it. I don't know what part of me saw Gran Torino on blu-ray in the store and said, "I need to buy this."

I give Gran Torino 3 out of 5 stars.