Old man growling

Clint Eastwood is clearly troubled by modern America. And in his new film Gran Torino, he growls all about it, to riveting effect.

“I don’t know if I can tell you exactly when the pussy generation started,” Eastwood says in this month’s Esquire. “Maybe when people started asking about the meaning of life.” His character in the film, Walt, a retired, angry Detroit autoworker, shares similar sentiments.

Well maybe Eastwood forgot, but his best work as a director, including Unforgiven and Mystic River, is very much about the meaning of life, and specifically about the qualities of redemption.

Gran Torino is about an angry, out-of-place man trying to find peace before he dies. It’s also about a man profoundly entrenched in the past and entirely uncomfortable with the present. He’s a retired autoworker in a town that can’t turn a profit, a racist in a neighborhood full of immigrants and a widower with a family he hates. Walt, and Eastwood by proxy, doesn’t fit in anymore, and he responds to the world with a growly nihilism suiting his weathered frame.

That anger, released in a cavalcade of racial epithets and threats in the first half of the movie, would be hard for anyone to sustain, so Walt does change, even if he doesn’t want to. He finds redemption in Thao, his young Hmong Vietnamese neighbor who tries to steal his car and is forced by his mother to work off his shame.

Since Walt values hard work above all things, as his young charge demonstrates his honor, he adopts the kid as a surrogate father, teaching him how to be a man (hint: tools, girls, hard work and foul language).

Pretty soon, Walt is fighting off the gangs who want Thao as a recruit and eating barbecue with his Vietnamese family. And for the first time he seems at peace, in tune with a world he doesn’t really understand but now at least has a place in.

This doesn’t last long. As Walt threatens and beats gang members, the violence escalates. As it comes to a head, he confronts the best way to end it. Was all that anger worth it? Did violence solve anything? (The answers, even by the film’s end, are left unclear.)

Without Eastwood, Gran Torino would be a handshake instead of a punch. It’s powerful because it trades on his past role as the vigilante Dirty Harry; while the character exists apart from the actor and director, Walt is so much more interesting because we know that’s Clint Eastwood.

As the character finds redemption onscreen, we see a director exploring the nuances of his persona and that internal drama makes this work all the more fascinating.

Eastwood directs with power and grace, garnering worthy performances from first-time actors. He’s also an expert at directing himself—and it shows.

But that’s not to say Gran Torino is without its problems.

The first part of the film is broadly comic—and its primary joke is that it’s funny to hear Eastwood grunting racist language (though another recurring joke is that he’s a pig who loves Asian food).

And I’ll admit, I laughed. Eastwood’s delivery had great timing—and it was, in a way, mocking his character’s prejudices.

But it didn’t take long for reality to set in: I was watching this movie in a suburban Seattle mall, filled with white people, some of who were roaring at the repeated use of the word “chink.” Maybe this is just a coincidence, but the only people I saw leave the movie early were an interracial couple.

And while the movie follows through, and Walt learns to love his Vietnamese neighbors and that they are people worthy of his respect, he never really gives up his bigotry; he still holds a grudge for what happened during the Korean War. And maybe this is more honest—can old men really give up long held hatred?

Regardless, it’s the ambiguities of Gran Torino that make it fascinating. The ending fits, capping the story in a very logical way. But part of me wishes it were a little ragged, because life is rarely this neat. Not everyone can be Jesus.

Some have said this film will be Eastwood’s last onscreen performance, and if that’s the case, it’s a fitting end to a long career for a grizzled old veteran. And he’s definitely not a pussy, even if he’s concerned with the meaning of life.

Check out clips from Gran Torino: