Eastwood's still got it

Gran Torino
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang and Ahney Her. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 1 hr. 56 min.  Rated R for language throughout and some violence.

Just seven weeks after Changeling, Clint Eastwood is releasing his second directorial outing of the year. Gran Torino is, in tone and style, about as far from its predecessor as you can get. While Gran Torino is not without serious aspects, it feels far more “commercial” than that film or Eastwood award-winners such as Bird, Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.  

Despite this — or perhaps because of it — it’s arguably a better film than Changeling; certainly it’s a film with more obvious pleasures. Not the least of these, of course, is the casting of its star —  the Man with a Very Well-Known Name — in his first onscreen appearance in four years.

We meet Walter Kowalski (Eastwood), a retired Detroit auto worker, at his wife’s funeral. He’s a gruff, forbidding old geezer, deeply offended by the disrespectful way his granddaughter behaves at the event. It’s immediately clear that his late wife was the warm, humanizing influence that kept the surly Walter just this side of being rude and antisocial all these years.

She was also a good deal more devoutly Catholic than Walter; and she made the parish’s young priest (Christopher Carley, looking like a very, very young Spencer Tracy) promise to get Walter into the confession booth, something Walter will not bend to, regardless of his beloved ex’s wishes.

Among Walter’s less endearing traits is his unabashed racism. He’s not very happy that the neighborhood he’s lived in for decades has been overrun almost entirely by “gooks” and “chinks.” One day, Thao (Bee Vang), a Hmong teenager whose family has moved in next door, is being bullied by local Asian-American gangbangers. Walter looks on with nothing more than disapproval and mild interest . . . until the fight spills over onto his lawn. Out comes his shotgun and the kind of threatening grimace that Eastwood characters have employed for decades.

The rest of the neighborhood’s old-school Asians insist on thanking Walter with endless gifts of food and flowers. He doesn’t want any of it, but he’s more comfortable and effective going up against toughs than trying to fend off aging immigrant women.

When he catches Thao trying to steal — at the insistence of the gang — his prize possession, a perfectly maintained Gran Torino, Thao’s family insists that the boy work for Walter to repent for the shame he has brought them. Walter really has no interest in having anything to do with Thao — or with having his solitude interrupted by anyone, Asian, black, or Anglo — but once again, they give him no option. In particular, he can’t win an argument against Thao’s smart, no-nonsense sister Sue (Ahney Her), whom he has already come to respect.

Unsurprisingly, the dramatic arc of the story involves Walter getting so involved with Thao, Sue and their family that he has to give up all but the most surface aspects of his bigotry. (He and his longtime barber still banter about chinks, dagos, and Polacks; in the film’s view, as long as they are equal opportunity racists and make a point of including their own ethnic groups in their dissing, it’s all a stylistic ritual of male bonding.) And, as we move into the final act, he is forced to take a strong stand against the gang members, as their assaults on the family grow more violent.

One of its great pleasures is giving Eastwood a chance to be funnier than he’s been in a long time. There are numerous close-ups of Walter scowling, while his sub-vocalized growl fills the soundtrack. So serious has Eastwood’s work been in recent years that it’s easy to forget just how funny he can be, particularly when he’s spinning the humor off of his very well-defined “tough guy” persona.

And, though perhaps it’s tacky to mention this . . . Clint is 78 friggin’ years old. And, with Gran Torino, he sets a record and edges toward a second. First, no other action icon has remained believably tough well into his 70s. The most obvious comparison, John Wayne, was 69 in his last film and, while still convincingly tough, didn’t seem fit enough to back up the attitude. Sean Connery is exactly Eastwood’s age, but has been MIA for five years. Not only can Eastwood still sound intimidating, he also looks strong enough to take on the gang of thugs he’s threatening.

Coincidentally, Charles Chaplin was 78 when he made his last film, but that was The Countess from Hong Kong, almost universally regarded as his worst feature. I’m not sure whether anyone has ever found grounds for comparing Eastwood and Charlie Chaplin, but the career similarities are there. Both are actors who exploited personas that made them great international stars, and who then took charge of their fortunes and segued into directing. Like Eastwood, Chaplin knew how to use his screen images better than anyone else. And has there been any other major figure to direct, star in and compose the music for his own movies?