Gran Torino

Gran Torino_360P

The 4 stars are solely for Eastwood's performance, which was top notch as usual. He is like a fine wine, he only gets better.... As for the rest of the movie, a couple of other reviewers have nailed it, but the multitude of people that gave it anywhere from 9 to 10 stars saw a different movie from me. The rest of the acting in the movie is honestly the worst I can remember seeing in a movie. There are times when there is maybe one actor in a movie who is not very polished, but in this movie, there are actor after actor, scene after scene, where aside, from Clint, I thought I was watching a middle school production. And it wasn't ONLY the acting. The dialogue for a large part of the movie was also very forced, unrealistic, and staged. Not great writing here folks. There are a few rewarding moments, and again, Clint's acting and character are superb, but that is not enough to recommend this amateurish, predictable, and pretty unrealistic movie.

A modern day masterpiece. There is really no movie that is so funny, however, so moving at the same time. A true cultural masterpiece that puts political correctness to shame. We are all equal and Gran Torino does a fine job of letting us know. One of Clint Eastwood's greatest. Acting and directing.

That's it. I give up. Clint Eastwood's films have lost it for me. After the predictable, boring, clichéd tripe that was Million Dollar Baby I risked seeing this as again I was taken in by all the good reviews... never again. Come on, when are people going to stop humouring this boring old fart? Drag his character over from MDB, make him a hate-filled racist as well as a scowling misogynist, and you have this guy. Don't you just want to see the angry, growling old git inevitably get reformed in the most painfully predictable, clichéd way by the most painfully predictable, clichéd characters imaginable, yet again? Please say no. At least MDB had people that could act, can't say the same for this. Watch the kid screaming to get out of the basement after the dirty old man's locked him in there, you'll see what I mean. I also would've gladly punched the girl in the face as well, to the point of being envious of the people that eventually got to do it in the film. What I hated about this... I don't even know where to begin. Started off boring, like MDB. Got even more tedious through the middle, most of the scenes being obvious set ups for all the 'emotional, hard-hitting' stuff later on, like MDB. The utterly inane and predictable build-up and ending fell jarringly flat, like MDB. By the end I was as angry as Eastwood himself. The film did reach a high point for me then, I had a LOL moment as Eastwood started singing (yes, singing) some puke-inducing crap song about his car through the closing credits, which I guess was supposed to be sad and emotional. The funniest comedies don't make me laugh that hard, the goriest horror films don't make me feel as sick. Thanks Clint. Now go back to bed and stop bothering people old man, don't get up again. You're just embarrassing yourself. Seriously, I'm lost for words as to why this is so highly rated. I can't understand why people insist on eating up this one-dimensional crap. Are they scared to say they don't like it? I'm not. I hated this film. Worst one I've had to sit through in a long time.

Despite all the rave reviews, which I don't understand, I didn't think this movie was made very well. It was mainly the acting and the writing. CLint Eastwoods performance was great, but everybody else was bad. From the Young preacher to the main Hmong characters the acting was forced and you could tell that all these people had never done a movie before, which according to IMDb is mostly true. Right off the bat you saw the actor who played the preacher was of considerably less caliber than anyone else in the scenes. The Hmong actor during a climatic scene with Clint Eastwood seemed fake, forced and just not very good. Again if everybody was that bad maybe no one would have noticed but they were up against a veteran actor, so it was quite noticeable. The writing was a little empty and it didn't take a guru to see right through the plot. I know Clint Eastwoods movies are plain movies, usually low budget, with fresh new actors, and simple plot lines, with the exception of his latest WWII movies and Mystic River. Although the revenue must be very high for this movie cause I'm sure it was dirt cheap to make considering all the aspects, but this certainly isn't a must see even if it is his last acting movie.

"Relax zipperhead, I'm not going to shoot you", grumped Harry the Ole Fart to Billy the karate Kid. "I may not be the most pleasant man that walks the Earth, you zip face, fish head, you gook...grunthhhhggghhh....." Enough already! Seriously, this film's so bad it's not even funny. Here's the whole ordeal in a nutshell: Over the top racist old war vet is grumpy. Over the top racist old war vet is slightly less grumpy. Over the top racist old war vet develops a heart. Some injustice, unfathomable plot twist. To everyone's ill concealed embarrassment, Clint barks a tune during the credits -The end- Mix in some truly pathetic acting by a cast clearly let in on a sympathy vote, the worst clichés gathered from Alan Smithee's collective works, The Ultimate Anthology of Prosthetic Plot Points, and you get this yard sale of banality which is Gran Torino. If you like your drama spoon fed to you with a predictability factor that would even make a soap screenwriter blush and if you can stand Eastwood doing poor grizzly imitation while impersonating a fossilized plank of pre-Cambrian wood throughout an entire film, I guess this movie is for you. But if you're still going for something slightly original, convincing or otherwise entertaining , I can only recommend a dozen of other films that are actually worth their viewing. Go see 'The Usual Suspects' if you never got around to see it. 'Big Fish', 'Lost in Translation', 'Funny Games', 'Ground Hog Day', 'Michael Clayton' or 'The Escapist'. And bloody shame on all those professional movie critics. I mean, surely they must have HBO so they can compare this shameful dross to for instance 'The Wire' and conclude that which was actually really made for TV, is light years ahead of this straight- to-DVD clunker. Gran Torino, a score of 8.4 and a #85 place in the IMDb top 250 list. What a joke! 4.5/10

With his performance Eastwood shows you why people like himself, Jack Nicholson, or Paul Newman only come around once in a lifetime. Though Eastwood would rather focus on directing, he can still carry a movie with his on screen presence, and he's pure dynamite in "Gran Torino". Perhaps the poor box office results of "hollywoody" movies like Absolute Power, True Crime, Space Cowboys, and Blood Work, caused Eastwood to shy away from acting, but given cutting edge material to work with as "Million Dollar Baby" and "Gran Torino", he's as good as ever. His character as the racist and salty war vet makes you think of that old guy we've all had on our blocks with the garbage door open, the million tools hanging everywhere, and always fixing or building something. I found myself not wanting the movie to end because the scenes between himself and the various Hmong characters where priceless. There may be complaints over the racist remarks and scenes, but Eastwood pulls it off in a way a real person like that would talk or act to a point where it ends up being lighthearted. I'm not going to give the plot away, but if you like your Clint Eastwood as a hard-nosed tough guy with foul language alla Dirty Harry or Heartbreak Ridge, you'll love this movie!!

Eastwood has shown us many times before he understands the art of movie-making. That's why it's so confusing to see he was able to make such an embarrassing, almost amateuristic movie. Yes, in the beginning of the movie some of the over the top grumpy, racist, cynical one-liners are quite amusing, but then it just turns into an embarrassing spectacle of bad acting, bad writing, bad editing, just bad movie-making. The acting of the girl, and especially the boy next door are just gutwrenching to watch. My head was spinning by such a display of amateurism. I try to understand how on earth they could have ended up in an Eastwood movie. Are they his adopted children or children of friends or something? For sure he's doing somebody a huge favor to include them in the movie. Some of the scenes are really beyond bad. What's up with him connecting with the Asian kids by fixing the washing machine in the basement? The whole idea of the scene is stupid and embarrassing, let alone the execution of it. And than the scene when they are waiting for the girl, not sure what happened to her. Eastwood stares at his hand saying (something like) "at least in Korea we were expecting to loose one of us".... Can it get more cheesy than that? I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry. And than the scenes with the barber. The initial idea works out well and amusing - the barber and Eastwood doing their grumpy routine. But than they try and milk the idea and even introduce the boy (deprived of all acting skills) into their 'domain of real men' to teach him the way of Men (to curse). It just gets so embarrassing, you just want to leave the theater and get drunk to simply destroy the brain cells that stored the whole thing, to save you from uncomfortable flashbacks for the rest of your life. Let's just hope mr. Eastwood had a blackout, let's just hope his sense of quality returns and let's hope the majority of IMDb-ers grow a sense of quality so 'movies' like this don't end up in the top 100 of all time again.

Although I am a big fan of Eastwood and have enjoyed most of his films, I found Gran Torino to be overly sentimental and I'm confused by the high IMDb rating. The plot thread is almost banal - why would the tough Asian gang devote so much effort in pursuit of the teenage boy who did not want to be a member? and lacked credibility - the sick old man was able to intimidate these gang members? and is too familiar - hardened racist comes around, honorable man sacrifices his life for justice and absolves himself of past sins through his last actions on earth, etc., etc. And I disagree with the comment that viewers were permitted to 'make up our own minds'. In this film, the moral of the story was in the viewer's face and an emotional response was overtly solicited. Compared to Unforgiven, a film that was both powerful and subtle, and avoided obvious moral judgments, Gran Torino is an amateurish piece.

I'm from the industrial Midwest, and I've known a lot of Walt Kowalskis. Grizzled, white ethnic old-timers who are not PC, whose cars are their first love, and who bemoan the loss of "their" neighborhoods, and "their" city. I've also known a fair number of kids like Thao, Hmong-American kids trying to make it in a world their parents do not understand. I've known neighborhoods like Walt's: neighborhoods in transition that show signs of decay, but are still lived in and tended to by hard working old timers like Walt and their hard-working immigrant neighbors, whom they don't understand and paint with a broad brush as "the other." I was excited to watch Gran Torino because of the rave reviews and its portrayal of this world of which I am so familiar. Sadly, while I appreciated the premise, and was happy to see so many Hmong actors in Hmong roles (rather than "professional" non-Hmong Asian actors playing these roles), the movie came up short. I found the dialogue and characters to lack credibility, and the plot too cliché-ridden to be taken seriously. The theme of death and rebirth, brought to us mainly through the fraught relationship of Walt and the young priest, had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer(Did Walt HAVE to come to rest in a Christ-like pose after the shooting in the last scene?! Puh-leeeze.) The "death-as-sad-and-happy" thing just never really connected with the larger message of the movie of "learning to love thy neighbor." I will cite one example of a relatively minor scene that illustrates this movie's larger problems: In real life, white boys who try to be "down with the 'hood," don't say "it's all good, bro!" to some gangbanger they don't know after said gangbanger hits on their girlfriend. Maybe in a movie like "Strait Outta Malibu" could that scene have worked, but in this context it was ridiculous and totally not-believable. This seemingly minor miscue threw so much of the movie off, because we're forced to conclude from it that Sue's boyfriend is mentally ill, and if that's the case, what does that say about Sue herself, who is one the most important drivers of the plot? Overall, this film suffers from too many cliché characters and too many cliché plot points to really be anything more than an average movie. Which is a shame, because it could have been so much more, and was a great opportunity for the wider world to get to know the Hmong people and their story.