Gran Torino

Sometimes I like movies that are dumb. No really, it’s true! And I very much enjoyed Gran Torino, despite the fact that it’s probably the dumbest movie I’ve seen all year. (Okay, all week.) Seriously though, I fully recommend this movie.

Let’s start with my man Clint Eastwood. I’m going to be honest; Clint is one of my all-time favorite actors. I think I’ve seen every single movie he’s ever made that didn’t have the words “Bridges” or “Madison County” in the title. He’s just a solid actor.

My favorite Clint Eastwood movie– by far– is Unforgiven. For those of you that haven’t seen Unforgiven: Stop reading my blog right now and go rent it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Good? Okay then.

Clint’s character in Unforgiven was William Muny, a retired gunslinger from the Old West.  I’m bringing this up because Clint really knocked that role out of the park. He nailed the whole “aging-badass-living-out-his-twilight-years” thing, and brought a real sense of humanity and believability to the character. Nice work, Clint!

In Gran Torino, Clint took that same basic William Muny-esque role, and exaggerated it to the point where he was just an over-the-top caricature of himself. Here, Clint plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker in Detroit. Walt’s wife just died, leaving Walt all alone to putter around the house and act all curmudgeonly towards his family, and his *gasp* Asian neighbors.

You see, Walt is a Korean War veteran, and so naturally he hates the Asians. He especially hates the Asian gangs who, when they’re not plotting to kill Stanton Sweet, walk around looking Asian, and speaking Asian, and acting all Asian all the time.

So Clint does a lot of scowling and grunting during the opening act, just so there’s no confusion about him being a curmudgeonly old man. It honestly got to the point where I expected Clint to tell those damn neighbor kids to “stay the hell off his lawn”. Oh hey wait! He does say exactly that. And he has a shotgun with him too! Sometimes the comedy just writes itself, I guess.

The movie gets pretty ham-fisted from there. (And not in the good, Jenna Jameson way either.) You see, underneath his cold, bigoted exterior, Walt actually has a heart of gold. (Note: of course he does.) It’s just that in 80 years of life, no one has ever touched him quite like a teenage Asian girl. Wait, that came out wrong. What I mean is, spending hours alone in a dank garage with a young Asian boy changes a man. And so Walt befriends his nubile young neighbors, stands up to the menacing Asian gang members, and learns the true meaning of Christmas along the way.

I know! I never would have seen that coming either!  I don’t know what it is about Asians and Happy Endings, but they just seem to go hand in hand.  (Metaphorically.)

Surprisingly, this movie works well as a comedy too. There are some genuinely funny scenes, which I’m pretty sure were intentional.  Like when Walt takes his young boytoy to the local barber shop to learn how to become a man.  That scene cracked me up.  And on the “unintentional comedy” side of the fence, we get treated to Old Man Clint singing the movie’s theme song over the closing credits. Seriously. Clint wrote and performed the song “Gran Torino” with his real-life son Clint Junior. (Note: I’m far too lazy to look up his real-life son’s actual name. So Clint Junior it is.) Also, I’m only relatively sure that it was Clint singing; it may have been Cookie Monster.

Regardless, this movie was very entertaining.  In fact, I sincerely hope the movie’s success spawns a TV sitcom spin-off.  I already have the idea:  It could be called “Stay Off My Lawn!”, and star that guy who played Quincy from Quincy, M.E. (I bet he’s available.)  Of course there would have to be some far-fetched setup in the first episode, like maybe Quincy gets into a car accident while driving his…wait for it… Gran Torino, and ends up killing an Asian couple.  So as restitution, Quincy has to adopt the couple’s three adorable Asian children (ages 5, 8 and 12), who slowly melt the ice around Qunicy’s cold, dark heart.  And every week wacky hijinks would ensue, like one of the Asian children would try to cook up the family dog, or make pee pee in Quincy’s Coke.   But by the end of the half hour, everyone would be hugging and learning to be more tolerant of each other’s cultures.

Are you telling me this wouldn’t be a great idea for a sitcom??  I mean, Perfect Strangers lasted for 8 seasons, and that show was terrible. (And yes, Perfect Strangers is absolutely the Gold Standard for inter-cultural race relations.)

I hope you’re listening, Hollywood.   Now get the hell of my lawn.