Gran Torino

Gran Torino is a good movie. It is predictable and leans on more than a few cliches and tropes, but still manages to be entertaining. Clint Eastwood's grumbles and sneers are hilarious and make the movie worth seeing. They also make the movie much lighter than I was expecting it to be. Where I thought I would find a dark, gritty movie about race and age and war and stuff, I saw Clint teach his neighbor how to be a man, and learn what a Huh-Mong is. That's not exactly a knock against the movie, I'm just expressing my betrayed expectations.

That's not to say that I don't have a couple of knocks against the movie. The first is maybe more of a personal problem because the ability to suspend disbelief varies from person to person. In my eyes it was far too easy for Clint to go from bitter old grump who can't spare a kind word for his own kids, let alone all of the damn gooks that have taken over the neighborhood to chumming around with a table of Hmong Grandmas.

The movie gives a number of reasons for this change. There's the spunky Hmong girl next door, Clint's declining health, the persistent young priest, the uncanny Hmong shaman and maybe some others. If you've ever seen a movie where an old white guy learns about young colored people, you can probably make them up yourself. It could be that in real life we never have the moments of singularity that change us, but I don't think that's what they're trying to get at here.

Movies that are driven by unbelievable concepts often have solid scripts and actors to back them up. We accept that Batman does all the stuff that he does, because a world has been created that allows those things to happen, and it is presented to us by strong actors. This is where Gran Torino fails. Apart from Clint all of the actors are nobodies. If the playing field was a little more even I might have had a better time with this movie.

The other side of this coin is that the dialogue is a little overwritten, which is an unforgivable sin for me. It's not quite Juno, but there were still many times when I was annoyed by a phrase that was just over the no one would ever say that line.

Cost/benefit analysis: I paid ten dollars to see this movie. I have few complaints about that price, but I would have been happier paying 5 bucks. There's nothing about this movie that needs to be on the big screen in a theater with stadium seating so it would be ok to hold off until it ends up in the second-run theaters or on dvd.

Final note: Some one told me today that Gran Torino is pretty much a Hallmark movie with Clint Eastwood in it. This infuriates me because I wish that I had come up with it first. Ignoring Clint's hugely entertaining performance, this is pretty on the nose.