Gran Torino

The Clint Eastwood project, in more ways than one, clearly is trying to emulate something of what Streetcar Named Desire was with Eastwood’s cantankerous lead character called Mr. Kowalski and his smarmy salesman son called Mitch. Like Stanley in Tennesse Williams’ seminal work, Walt Kowalski is touchy about issues of race and somewhat of a misogynist. But Marlon Brando’s angry young man is now a grouchy world-weary Eastwood.

Walt is a Korean war-veteran in Michigan, irritable and lonesome after his wife’s death, who lives next door to a southeast Asian family in a Hmong neighbourhood. Hmong is a non-derogatory term for immigrants into America from nations such as Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and so on. The film explores the tensions within Walt related to his rejection of his wife’s church and his racial prejudices and the tensions in the suburb where he lives between the respectable Asian family and Asian gangs.

There is no doubt Eastwood is perfect as the complaining old neighbour, even uttering the unintentionally amusing line “Get off my lawn!” which becomes something of a catchphrase. However the main crux of the film relies on Walt’s relationship with two teenagers from the family next door, reclusive Thao (Ben Vang) and his gregarious sister Sue Van Lor (Ahney Her). While Ahney Her is excellent as the feisty youth who brings Eastwood onto the side of the family, the film focuses heavily on Walt’s efforts to make Thao into what he perceives a young man to be, brash, hard working and with a woman on his side.

This is also an attempt from Walt to try and get Thao to stay away from his cousin’s gang which initially try to recruit him and then begin to trouble his family when he rejects. The problem is Thao’s portrayal by Ben Vang turns what is simply a shy character into a boring one and dialogues with Eastwood feel clunky and without any kind of narrative spark. Another rather lead-footed aspect to the film is between Walt and the priest of the church he and his late wife used to attend before Walt left, Father Janovich (Christopher Carney).

The writing for this character feels very woolly with the focal point being that Janovich believes as a religious leader he understands death with Walt shunning this as the Father has no insight into his horrific experiences in the Korean war. The whole atmosphere of a member of the clergy trying to get an arrogant man to attend church has echoes of There Will Be Blood with Janovich even saying, while discussing the gangs, without any hint of tongue in cheek that “There will be bloodshed.”

The rising conflict between Walt and his neighbours on one side and the gang on the other culminate in the dénouement of the film which while not obvious on paper become very apparent before the pivotal scene, lessening any impact it has. I can’t imagine this is intentional on the part of Eastwood but if it is then there seems little reason to make it so.

The film seems to try and resonate with Eastwood’s famous Western characters in the Dollars trilogy and in Unforgiven and in sense it pulls this off quite neatly but a lack of strong performances from the supporting case, predictable plot turns and character developments and a lack of narrative punch mean it does not compare favourably to Eastwood’s other recent directorial efforts.