Gran Torino

[afterburn 549]

Ditto

[ruf-porsche]

Originally Posted by Souk

Just for conversation sake, how would you know?


Anyhow, it would have been a rather long film to really develop the ethnic realism and it would have bored the general American audience. There aren't too many Asian ethnic films out there for a reason....Americans are uninterested in learning and wouldn't appreciate the film for what it is. You can't "get" Asian culture by watching a film.

Joy Luck Club, but I felt that it was just Amy Tan bashing Asian Men. Asian men were portray as womanizer (Russell Wong) or Cheap (the Architect that was married to Lauren Tom or the weak father who was always crying.

But I really enjoyed Dragon The Bruce Lee Story.

[afterburn 549]

I think if you folks are not care full you will see this as a racial film...It is Not.
It is a story.
A story about inner city...people make up the story, that's the way it is...If one goes too far out of bounds to please every one that wants to paint a biased picture, it would just become so watered in the pseudo politics, Politically correct crap that it never would make any since at all.

[berettafan]

SPOILER-----

Souk- Wasn't talking about the ethnic interactions.

-in the end the bad guys actually hung out waiting for the cops? and didn't try to shoot their way out of the situation?

-the bad guys popping out of each window with guns ready was just goofy.

-nobody in the community talks when the girl gets raped and beaten but the whole hood sings when the old white guy gets popped?

Point is lots of shortcuts for the sake of convenience.

[MotoSook]

-fan: I wasn't being racially defensive, sorry for coming off that way. (now I know what afterburn was getting at). They did take some short cuts and that was partly why the film had an Indie feel. They could have made it a 2.5 hour long movie and addressed all the shortcomings but then we might have been bored. It would have been great if they could have gone deeper and made it more dramatic, but there's always the risk that the general American audience will lose patience.

There aren't too many films out there that can't be picked apart yet still be considered great. This is one of them...

[berettafan]

i think you are correct Souk; i personally would love to have sat for another 1/2 hr to get the full deal particularly with Clint doing the directing. But most folks would not and the film would have been called tedious.

[vash]

the film rocked.

SPOILER!!!

i love how both parties, just plain accepted each other. i dont think the old man quit being racist..anymore than the hmong quit thinking clint was a grumpy old arsehole. they just accepted each other.

[berettafan]

the old woman on the porch was pretty darn cool.

[beasty]

super movie..loved his "spooks" and "gooks" comments throughout the film.

[Heel n Toe]

::::::::::::::Possible Spoilers :::::::::::: Don't read unless you're okay with that or have already seen it::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

We saw it Saturday and really liked it. I had a few minor problems with it, but overall, I recommend it highly. Very enjoyable to see the 78-yr. old Eastwood in that curmudgeon role... but it's curmudgeon-ness with a genuine, believeable backstory. I thought it was a bit overdone/unrealistic that his character used racial/ethnic slurs in laundry list type fashion, almost as if he was attempting to get every single one in the dialogue; especially when referring to his Hmong neighbors; he used slope, chink, gook, zipperhead, and a couple of others IIRC.

And hey... I don't think we ever see him drive "the car"... and it's out of character for Kowalski to treat it as a total garage queen.

I'm pretty much in agreement with Ebert's review... except it's obvious Ebert knows nothing about firearms when he mentions Kowalski's shotgun.
________________________
Gran Torino
by Roger Ebert

I would like to grow up to be like Clint Eastwood. Eastwood the director, Eastwood the actor, Eastwood the invincible, Eastwood the old man. What other figure in the history of the cinema has been an actor for 53 years, a director for 37, won two Oscars for direction, two more for best picture, plus the Thalberg Award, and at 78 can direct himself in his own film and look meaner than hell? None, that's how many.

"Gran Torino" stars Eastwood as an American icon once again -- this time as a cantankerous, racist, beer-chugging retired Detroit autoworker who keeps his shotgun ready to lock and load. Dirty Harry on a pension, we're thinking, until we realize that only the autoworker retired; Dirty Harry is still on the job. Eastwood plays the character as a man bursting with energy, most of which he uses to hold himself in. Each word, each scowl, seems to have broken loose from a deep place.

Walt Kowalski calls the Asian family next door "gooks" and "chinks" and so many other names he must have made it a study. How does he think this sounds? When he gets to know Thao, the teenage Hmong who lives next door, he takes him down to his barber for a lesson in how Americans talk. He and the barber call each other a Polack and a dago and so on, and Thao is supposed to get the spirit. I found this scene far from realistic and wondered what Walt was trying to teach Thao. Then it occurred to me Walt didn't know it wasn't realistic.

Walt is not so much a racist as a security guard, protecting his own security. He sits on his porch defending the theory that your right to walk through this world ends when your toe touches his lawn. Walt's wife has just died (I would have loved to meet her,) and his sons have learned once again that the old bastard wants them to stay the hell out of his business. In his eyes, they're overweight meddlers working at meaningless jobs, and his granddaughter is a self-centered greed machine.

Walt sits on his porch all day long, when he's not doing house repairs or working on his prized 1972 Gran Torino, a car he helped assemble on the Ford assembly line. He sees a lot. He sees a carload of Hmong gangstas trying to enlist the quiet, studious Thao into their thuggery. When they threaten Thao to make him try to steal the Gran Torino, Walt catches him red-handed and would just as soon shoot him as not. Then Thao's sister Sue (Ahney Her, likable and sensible) comes over to apologize for her family and offer Thao's services for odd jobs, Walt accepts only reluctantly. When Sue is threatened by some black bullies, Walt's eyes narrow and he growls and gets involved because it is his nature.

What with one thing and another, his life becomes strangely linked with these people, although Sue has to explain that the Hmong are mountain people from Laos who were U.S. allies and found it advisable to leave their homeland. When she drags him over to join a family gathering, Walt casually calls them all "gooks" and Sue a "dragon lady," they seem like awfully good sports about it, although a lot of them may not speak English. Walt seems unaware that his role is to embrace their common humanity, although he likes it when they stuff him with great-tasting Hmong food and flatter him.

Among actors of Eastwood's generation, James Garner might have been able to play this role, but my guess is, he'd be too nice in it. Eastwood doesn't play nice. Walt makes no apologies for who he is, and that's why, when he begins to decide he likes his neighbors better than his own family, it means something. "Gran Torino" isn't a liberal parable. It's more like, out of the frying pan and into the melting pot. Along the way, he fends off the sincere but very young parish priest (a persuasive Christopher Carley), who is only carrying out the deathbed wishes of the late Mrs. Kowalski. Walt is a nominal Catholic. Hardly even nominal.

"Gran Torino" is about two things, I believe. It's about the belated flowering of a man's better nature. And it's about Americans of different races growing more open to one another in the new century. This doesn't involve some kind of grand transformation. It involves starting to see the "gooks" next door as people you love. And it helps if you live in the kind of neighborhood where they are next door.

If the climax seems too generic and pre-programmed, with too much happening fairly quickly, I like that better than if it just dribbled off into sweetness. So would Walt.

[Mr.Puff]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

I thought it was a bit overdone/unrealistic that his character used racial/ethnic slurs in laundry list type fashion, almost as if he was attempting to get every single one in the dialogue; especially when referring to his Hmong neighbors; he used slope, chink, gook, zipperhead, and a couple of others IIRC.

Have you seen "Street Kings"? Here is a line from Keanu, "You've got eyes like apostrophes, dress white, talk black, drive Jew. How am I supposed to tell what kind of zipper-head, dog munching, dink you are if you don't."

He was trying to get his car stolen.

[Hebrewhomeboy]

Just felt like dragging up an old thread here

I just watched it with a buddy and wow, I'm impressed. This is one of the best movies I've seen in years. Although I'm sure it's not intended as a comedy, my sides were hurting from laughing at the way Clint dealt with everyone and everything. This is one of the very few movies I'll actually buy, and watch again.

[Pazuzu]

Finally got to see this (it came out on DVD yesterday).

Quite a powerful little movie, eh? An interesting second view of the Hmong culture. coming from the Midwest, most of us only knew of a single incident involving some hunters which soured everyone to that culture.

[MotoSook]

Don't forget one of Dhamer's victim, Bradshaw.


Gonna have to rent the movie for my parents to see.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Souk

Don't forget one of Dhamer's victim, Bradshaw.
Gonna have to rent the movie for my parents to see.

Didn't know that he was Hmong, but I think I remember which one you're talking about (thought he was more "generically" Vietnamese).

[m21sniper]

I thought it sucked, to be quite honest.

[Sonic dB]

I saw Gran Torino last week and liked it alot. The part in the middle with the kid when Walt takes him to the barbershop was halarious...it had me rolling on the floor laughing.

I agree with berettafan above about some of the unrealistic parts like the kids quick to their guns and the girl getting raped were sort of cliche...but ultimately it worked for the film and was more of an artistic statment about what could happen in those situations.... most movies have fake aspects to them anyway.

Clints films this decade can be compared and hold up very well to any film director in history. The guy is in his 70s and this is his most prolific period... tell me one other director that could pull off this resume in 1 decade!:

Invictus (2009) (post-production)
Gran Torino (2008)
Changeling (2008)
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
"The Blues" (1 episode, 2003)
- Piano Blues (2003) TV episode
Mystic River (2003)
Blood Work (2002)
Space Cowboys (2000)

I didnt see Changeling but heard it was good... I didnt care for Blood Work much, and there were parts of Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby which seemed a bit far fetched (though both were great films overall)....but other than those small quibbles, this is quite an impressive list of work in one decade for sure.