Gran Torino: A Review

As the credits rolled in Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, we hear a quiet piano and the soft voice of Eastwood singing the gentle lyrics - gentle now the tender breeze blows, whispers through my Gran Torino, whistling another tired song. It’s a wonderful, and tender conclusion to an intriguing work from Eastwood. But I had to look the lyrics up, because I just couldn’t hear them over the mass exodus that was going on in the theater. It was a strange experience. Never had I seen a film that obviously was so intent on having you stick around for at least the opening moments of the credits, only to have an audience so soundly reject the invitation.

I chalk it up to a strange, Sunday night crowd at an odd, Charlotte theater, because it’s pretty clear to me that the film earned that moment. It was a fitting finish to a film that took many surprising turns. At the outset, we are introduced to Clint’s Walt Kowalski, a surly old man who is burying his wife. He lives in the same house and Detroit neighborhood that he spent his life in, but it is a neighborhood that is radically changed. What was once a bedroom community for auto workers is now run-down and struggling with gang activity. It is also populated by a large Asian population, something that runs against the grain of this small-minded guy.

In those opening moments, I was bracing myself for a tough adventure. Clint is rarely on screen without offering a broad and over-the-top sneer that echoes his signature characters. His look took me aback, as I couldn’t understand what seemed to be silly overacting coming from this master. It became clear, though, as the plot developed, that Clint knew what he was doing. Walt, a tough, Korean War vet, intervenes when his neighbor’s son is facing tough pressure from a local gang. This moment elevates his status for that house and the neighborhood, and despite his best efforts to be left alone and despise the changes in this community, he is barraged with gifts from those around him. This leads him to a grudging relationship with the neighbor’s daughter, an awkward friendship that undergoes it’s own story when her brother, in an effort to prove his worth with that gang, attempts to steal Walt’s prized possession: his 1972 Gran Torino.

The family requires the son to work for Walt as a way of restoring honor, and in their friendship and in Walt’s friendship with the family, we see something that’s rarely seen in these kinds of films: humor. While his sneer in those opening moments seemed overplayed, it was effective at lightening the mood enough to accept the humorous turn. The humor keeps us engaged and keeps us looking fresh at what could otherwise be standard fare for films on racism and urban life.

As expected, Walt’s views on his neighbors are softened as he gets to know them, and in the relationship with the son, he begins to instill life lessons that show cultural connections between the boy’s family and Walt’s old-school ways. Both Walt and the family’s worlds are facing the pressure of the urban gang and it’s ways of destroying the lives of the young. Again, nothing we haven’t seen before, but the film effectively shows us the ways in which both the young boys and girls can feel trapped by that world.

The film wisely avoids trying to postulate broad solutions for the challenges of urban crime and the destructive force of gangs, but as it tries to find a solution for this kid, it again takes down an interesting road. Without spoiling the plot, I found myself questioning where Walt seemed to be heading. After all, at least as I understood it, Unforgiven was supposed to be Eastwood’s movement away from revenge fantasies. This film wants to be just that kind of fantasy, as the plot moves us to that place. But the turn it offers is something that I think Christians should find resonate with our own story.

Films on racism and urban life are both fairly cliched, and so I found myself walking away from Gran Torino (after the song ended) glad to see a master like Eastwood offer his own voice on both subjects. He was remarkably able to engage those cliches while giving us something different. I am doubtful that he has discovered any deep solutions for these problems, but with ideas in view like forging relationships, sharing values, and living self-sacrificially for our friends, he is pointing to virtues that need to be in play in these and many other problems that we face in our world.