Dirty Old Harry

Eastwood dares gangs to make his day in Gran Torino

When asked if he would make a Dirty Harry 6, Clint Eastwood used to joke that he could imagine Harry Callahan, long retired, fly fishing with his .44 Magnum.

It turns out he wasn't exactly joking. In Gran Torino, the 78-year-old Eastwood plays a cranky old codger who yells at the neighbor kids to get off his lawn, guzzles Pabst beer and keeps his trusty firearms close at hand. The movie, Eastwood’s second release this year after the fine Changeling, is like Dirty Harry-meets-Grumpy Old Men. With Asian cuisine. He reminds us of why we didn't vote for John McCain.

Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired Detroit autoworker mourning his recently deceased wife. Walt’s hatreds are many: he grumbles at his teenage granddaughter’s belly ring, the doting attention of his son and daughter-in-law (Brian Haley and Geraldine Hughes), the Asian family next door (“Damn barbarians!”), and at Father Janovich (Christopher Calrey), the round-faced young priest who urges Walt to come to confession. Walt is an unapologetic racist, trading ethnic jokes and scurrilous insults with his barber. He is also, for the sake of drama, hiding some unspecified, coughing-up-blood illness.

The movie takes us into the home of the Asian neighbors, Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia. The youngest son, a quiet teen named Tao (Bee Vang) is being harassed by his cousin Fong (Doua Moua), who wants to recruit Tao into his gang. The gang pressures Tao into stealing Walt’s prized 1972 Gran Torino, a lovingly preserved heirloom that sparks envy in all who behold its gleaming beauty.

Like Walt, the last white man in a shifting neighborhood, the car is an eight-cylinder symbol of the way things used to be, when “Buy American” meant something, before the Big Three automakers had to crawl to Congress and beg for a bailout. Grrr, wusses!

Walt catches Tao in medias theft and nearly blows his head off with a shotgun. Walt grumbles a lot, but eventually lets Tao’s penitent family talk him into letting the boy do odd jobs for him. Walt becomes the foul-mouthed father Tao never had, schooling him on home repairs and the manly art of insult banter.

We are in Dirty Harry territory as we tour Walt’s neighborhood, a scuzzy war zone terrorized by Asian, black and Mexican gangs. Walt becomes a hero by intimidating some African American thugs who are harassing Tao’s very cool sister, Sue (Ahney Her). He aims his finger at them like a cocked gun and delivers a parody of Dirty Harry’s famous “Do I feel lucky?” speech.

Sue (Ahney Her), unperturbed by Walt’s gruff personality, invites the old man for dinner at the house, where he is enveloped in the warmth of the family gathering. The ladies ply him with delicacies, and a diminutive shaman reads his fortune, accurately sensing that Walt, who is haunted by his Korean War experiences, is “not at peace.”

The colorful, respectful dramatization of the Hmong family rituals, with Walt as bemused outsider, is the most rewarding part of the movie. The portrayal recalls the quiet immersion in Japanese culture of Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima. Disappointingly, Gran Torino tarries only briefly in cross-cultural territory before heading down the well-traveled path of villains-and-vigilantes. Violence escalates when Fong’s gang targets Tao and his family, prompting Walt to take action in a way that allows him redemption for his past sins.

Nick Schenk’s screenplay is woefully prosaic and at times painfully clichéd. Here’s Walt’s “concerned” son and daughter-in-law wanting to put him in a retirement home! Here’s Walt debating the “padre” over the value of religion! Here’s Walt saying, “You ‘slopes’ are supposed to be good at math!”

Yet there is considerable interest in the way the movie incorporates Eastwood’s pet themes: the hero with the dark past he is trying to forget, the gulf between mythologized heroics and ugly reality. With its unholy mix of cultural tolerance, racial stereotypes and gun violence, Gran Torino mirrors the contradictions of its director/star, a vegan, pro-gun pacifist who likes George Bush, hates the Iraq War and once said he would kill Michael Moore if he stalked him with a camera the way he did Charlton Heston.

It’s a bit hokey, like its eponymous muscle car, but in its oddness and ambiguity is a fitting vehicle for what Eastwood has said will be his last screen performance.

A version of this appeared in the Cleveland Scene.

Make Mine an Old-Fashioned

Changeling, Clint Eastwood’s period thriller based on a true Depression-era California story, is a traditionally minded movie with solid, old-fashioned values: fine acting, an absorbing, suspenseful story with clear moral lines, and a somber tone respectful of its sad, brave characters. (Somber seems to be Eastwood’s favorite mood.)

Written by veteran TV producer J. Michael Stracynski following a year’s meticulous research, the movie tells the story of Christine Collins, an L.A. single mother whose son, Walter, disappeared in 1928, setting off a bizarre series of events that exposed deep corruption in the LA police department. Angelina Jolie plays Collins, a phone-company supervisor who, in the mode of the day, glides across the switchboard floor in roller skates.

When her beloved Walter (Gattlin Griffith) disappears, Collins tries to enlist the help of an indifferent LAPD. After five months, the police announce they have found the boy in Illinois, but when the child arrives, Collins knows he isn’t her son. Unwilling to risk bad publicity, the police persuade her to take the boy home “on a trial basis.” The boy is clearly an impostor, but when Christine continues to press police captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan, with a sinister Irish brogue) to find her son, Jones brands her a delusional, unfit mother. Christine’s case attracts the attention of a crusading preacher, Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich, oddly reminiscent here of Vincent Price), who broadcasts a radio program targeting LAPD corruption. With Briegleb’s help, Christine goes to the press, and Jones has her committed to a snake pit of an asylum. The story grows even grimmer with the discovery of a series of grisly child murders at a ranch in Wineville, California and the arrest of their perpetrator, Gordon Stewart Northcott (the excellent Jason Butler Harner).

The movie hews closely to the facts of the case, though mercifully doesn’t dramatize the more sensational details of the “Wineville Chicken Coop Murders” — the flashes of implied violence are more than enough to haunt your dreams. Despite some minor anachronisms, the period detail is impressive, from furnishings and cars to cloche hats and dropped-waist dresses. Jolie is affecting in a performance much quieter than her intense histrionics in A Mighty Heart, albeit so skinny she looks in some scenes like a pair of tremulous red lips on a stick. Someone, please get this woman a sandwich.


Originally published in Cleveland Scene.