What would Christmas Day be without a Scrooge and a tale of redemption?
In “Gran Torino,” the guy with the clutched heart is bigot Walt Kowalski, played with flinty reserve by Clint Eastwood in his first role since the 2004 Academy Award-winning “Million Dollar Baby.”
Walt’s “bahs” and “humbugs” are delivered as racial epithets directed most often at his Asian neighbors.
But his snarl has many targets. When we first meet him, Walt is standing ramrod straight at his wife’s funeral service. He growls while looking at his sons, their families, his teen granddaughter arriving late. He makes the same rumbling sound listening to carrot-topped, fresh-faced Father Janovich (Christopher Carley) launch into a by-the-numbers eulogy.
The retired Ford assembly-line worker lives in a Michigan neighborhood that has long ago become home to working-class immigrants like his next-door neighbors.
The title refers to Walt’s prize possession, a forest green 1972 Ford muscle car that sits in a garage under a tarp.
Newcomers Ahney Her and Bee Vang play Sue and Thao Lor, the teenagers next door. The Lors and other Hmong families came to the U.S. after the Vietnam war.
When bookish Thao is conscripted by a cousin and other Hmong gang members to steal the Torino, he fails. He winds up making amends to a reluctant Walt, who becomes a neighborhood hero when he delivers a little rough justice to the gang. If it sounds sentimental, it is, if muscularly so.
“Gran Torino” invites a love-it-or- loathe-it reaction. There are moments when Walt isn’t the only throwback we’re not sure we like.
No character escapes the film’s heavy crayon rendering. Yet, because of Eastwood’s assured gravity and the sweeter work of Her and Vang, the movie moves.
Sue is the true catalyst for our fondness and forgiveness for Walt. Actress Her plays the young woman with a kind of self-assured bravado. She has a sociologist’s grasp of inter-ethnic and gender conflict. “Hmong girls go to college. The boys go to jail,” she tells Walt. She challenges a group of harassers on their alpha-dog posturing.
Throughout the film, Father Flanagan remains a thorn in Walt’s side. He promised Dorothy Kowalski he’d keep spiritual tabs on her husband, maybe even get him into the confession booth.
Confessions come. But don’t look for them to take place in the cathedral or end with a complement of Hail Marys and Our Fathers.
There are clumsy moments to this racially charged parable, written by Nick Schenk.
For instance, are Walt’s visits to his local barber (John Carroll Lynch) supposed to mitigate his fondness for ethnic slurs?
You see, he talks to his Italian barber and, later, the Irish foreman he introduces Thao to, with the same sharp tongue. It’s not racist. It’s a type of blue, hail-fellow-well-met banter.
That argument is hardly convincing.
Eastwood isn’t just fond of this generation. The sturdy, agile 78-year-old director is a card-carrying AARP member.
Walt is a Korean War vet with a footlocker full of memories: a silver star, a rifle, black and white photos from the war and from a lifetime ago. The vet still carries a lighter with the 1st Cavalry Division insignia.
If the movie isn’t “post-racial,” perhaps it’s because Eastwood knows there are many Americans who will never quite be that. Their stories will collide with our fresher ones.
“Gran Torino” is very much about the thing Eastwood knows most intimately — movies. Like “Unforgiven,” his neo-Western classic, this film ponders the value of the yarns we spin about heroes and lawless encounters.
On a street corner, Walt confronts a trio of thugs. Will they make his day? You wonder.
As Walt and Thao’s relationship deepens, the tensions with the gangbangers come to a boil.
“Gran Torino” asks: Do we need guys who ride in to save the day? Can they, or do they, hurry the conflict?
The answers are powerful — but hardly obvious.
“Gran Torino”
R for language throughout, and some violence. 1 hour, 56 minutes. Directed by Clint Eastwood; written by Nick Schenk; photography by Tom Stern; starring Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Brian Haley, Geraldine Hughes, Dreama Walker, Brian Howe, John Carroll Lynch. Opens today at area theaters.
