One that Slipped through the Cracks on Oscar Night
In Gran
Torino Clint Eastwood plays a character named Walt Kowalski, a
biggot and a hero. Walt Kowalski doesn't like the way the world is
shaping up. He feels today's young people have no gumption, no morals
and no purpose. He certainly sees this in his own family. His son sells
foreign cars, though Walt himself worked for Ford his whole life. His
granddaughter smacks her gum at her grandmother's funeral, when she's
not texting. But Walt begins to hope when he sees opposite values played
out among people he had previously held in derision. A Hmong neighbor
boy named Thao, who was coerced into an anti-social act by a gang ran by
his cousin, punctuates his woosiness with acts of decency that renews
Walt's faith in people.
Walt starts out as a racist Korean war veteran who calls all Asians "chinks" and "slants" and ends up going to great extremes to help and protect the people on whom he once heaped abuse. Eastwood gives us not some starry-eyed Utopian vision of humanity, but parades for us many of the darker, baser aspects of our race. It's ugly and familiar. Like many of the people we know in real life. Except in this story, the leopard changes its spots. Eastwood shows us how even a man as backward and depraved as Walt can change.
Against every wish and desire, Walt actually gets to know a Hmong neighbor boy named Thao and his sister. The sister is normal and real. Not some Asian super model. But a real, live, actual person that we cannot help but like. Walt realizes that he has more in common with these "chinks" than he does with his own family.
Eastwood certainly plays the tough guy. And he plays it convincingly. No surprise. But he also shows us a man who (though very set in his ways) can change for the better. Vulnerable. Fallable.
Courage and prejudice. Cowardice and decency.The Gran Torino DVD shows us people the way they really are. You'll laugh at things you feel you shouldn't, cry at things you thought you wouldn't and identify with characters you thought you couldn't. You'll laugh, you'll cry. You will lament the depths to which people can go. You will exult in the heights to which human beings can soar. The film will leave you in awe. No exaggeration.