If Clint Eastwood doesn't win the awards for Best Picture and Best Actor for Gran Torino, it will be solely because the voters for those awards were too lazy to watch this movie.

Gran Torino is currently only showing in select cities, if it is near you, rush out and see it, if it isn't, go as soon as it comes out.

Gran Torino has been advertised looking like here's Clint Eastwood as an old Dirty Harry, looks like he's going to be shooting up some punk gang kids. Great! I can't wait to go see it. Well, that's what I thought it was. I was wrong. The ad campaign got me to go, but it really doesn't portray the movie for what it is, it short changes how great this movie is. Gran Torino is a longer than average movie, which I didn't want to end.

Without ruining the story by retelling it, Gran Torino tells the story of Walt Kowalski, an old Korean War veteran who has just lost his wife, and now finds himself largely alone among minorities in the Detroit nieghborhood he has lived most of his life in. His distrust and hatred of what the minorities have done to his nieghborhood is immediately evident. The film is filled with colorful language and just about every racial slur in the dictionary. But this language which starts as hateful, becomes endearing, and is used with great humor throughout the movie. You will probably have to see the movie twice to catch some of the comeback lines because you're laughing at what one of the characters said. Walt's interaction with his longtime barber is one of these many moments.

Gran Torino takes its name from the car Walt owns, a car he helped build when he worked for Ford. This car becomes the object of desire for a gang member who sends his cousin to steal it to become initiated into the gang, a gang the young boy wants nothing to do with. The boy, Thao/Tom, of course fails in stealing the car and only increases Walt's hate of the minorities in his neighborhood. A hate that would soon change when he becomes their hero and is befriended by the daughter of the Hmong family next door, Sue. Sue and Walt's interaction is the best in the movie. She is able to give it back to Walt as good as he gives it to her. (Sue, played by Ahney Her, will hopefully be rewarded for this great performance with a best supporting actress award) "Wally" is important to her, and she becomes important to him. All the while, Sue softens up Walt and he begins to see her and her family as people, as he is accepted by them, and he in turn begins to understand and accept them, including her brother, the boy who tried to steal his car.

Walt becomes the positive male role model/father figure that Thao doesn't have, and Thao, the appreciative son that Walt's own children aren't. Thao is torn between not wanting any part of the gang life, but also being forced into it. Absent Walt, we know what path Thao would have been forced down. Gran Torino tells this story of Walt's transformation and Thao's salvation from a gang life, and growth into a confident young man.

Gran Torino follows some familiar themes from Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. Asking even the same question, but getting a different answer to: What's it like to kill a man?

Like Unforgiven, Eastwood plays the old man forced into a situation from which there is no coming back. We know this, and we don't want it to end this way, we know those gangs are coming back and will need to be dealt with.

Clint Eastwood's film is not only entertaining and moving, it provides social commentary. Dealing with gangs, the absence of positive male role models in the lives of the characters, racism, rape, murder, life, death and redemption.

Gran Torino may be the last film where we see Clint Eastwood as an actor, it is also his finest, their is no doubt he deserves the Best Actor Oscar, along with many other awards this film should receive.

Recommended: Yes

Movie Mood: Serious Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing